The Three Occupational Therapy Values

There are three main values under occupational therapy:

People are an open system to their environments.

Unlike the medical specialists who only focus on their client’s organ, OT practitioners view their clients as a whole. In other words, OT practitioners view their clients as people interacts with their biological, psychological and sociocultural aspect of their environment. 

If any of these environment is disturbed, then the patient is going to have a problem! As a result, when an occupational therapist sees a client, s/he must know what his/her client’s social role and his/her client’s biological and psychological health status. 

 OT believes that a client learns through repetitively doing their occupations. In other words:

“Occupation as means and Occupation as ends”

-O’Brien and Hussey, 2012

Occupation as means refers to the fact that doing an occupation that the client’ like is important during the therapy. Occupation as an end means that the goal of having a therapy is to allow the client to able independently to do the things that they like to do!

Client first. Aka customer first.

The third crucial believe of an OT practitioner is that the therapy should be conducted by his/her client’s need desires. In other words, OT practitioner believes that client should take part in organizing the therapy process, especially making their therapeutic goals.  

 

 

 

A.L

Reference:

O’Brien J.C & Hussey S.M (2012) Introduction to Occupational Therapy, Washington: Elsevier