What do occupational therapists add to pain management?

I’ve struggled with professional identity from time to time, but after completing my PhD thesis looking at how people live well with pain, I’ve developed a new understanding of how occupational therapists add value in this area of practice. Occupational therapists joke that “no-one knows what an occupational therapist does” – and sadly, that’s true. It’s not because what we do isn’t important, it’s because our view of people and the way we work with people differs from most health professions. Occupational therapists don’t treat disease per se, we work with people’s function and participation, with a person’s illness experience. We don’t fit inside a biomedical, disease-oriented model of humans. This means an occupational therapist works with people using a process-oriented approach. This approach begins by understanding what a person values, what matters in their life, and how the person’s life context influences their participation. Occupational therapists are concerned with the daily minutiae of life: the way you clean your teeth, how you get to work, what you do for fun, the roles you undertake, the daily routine you follow, the things that make your life your own – not a facsimile of someone else’s. In pain management/rehabilitation, occupational therapists are there to help people resume, or begin, a life that looks like their own. To integrate strategies into daily...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: Chronic pain Occupational therapy Professional topics Resilience Science in practice Source Type: blogs