Occupational Therapist Assistant

Emotional, physical, or mental handicaps can hinder a person from entering the workforce or living an independent life. Even routine tasks can be difficult to handle, and thus require a different approach. As an Occupational Therapist Assistant, you reconnect people with society by teaching them how to accomplish everyday tasks, and finding tricks that they can use to function better at home or on the job.

Your work as the Occupational Therapist Assistant is closely linked with the Occupational Therapist ’s. While they oversee treatment and counsel patients, as the Occupational Therapist Assistant you help plan rehabilitation exercises, and oversee the physical part of the therapy.

Throughout the day, you assist various patients at the clinic with exercises that strengthen them and make routine tasks easier. A person who has just been prescribed a wheelchair, for example, needs to learn how to get out of bed and into the wheelchair without hurting themselves. You assist them in practicing this movement, along with stretches to limber the body and prevent soreness, until it becomes second nature for them. This accomplishment gives them more freedom to care for themselves.

Exercise activities also take up a large portion of your time. These exercises loosen patients up and encourage pain-free movement. So you need to keep fit yourself to help them stretch and work out.

The beauty of this job is that you work closely with people to change their lives for the better. Your efforts create powerful results that you can see every single day.