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Occupational Therapists

  • Bright Outlook
  • Rapid Growth

Assess, plan, and organize rehabilitative programs that help build or restore vocational, homemaking, and daily living skills, as well as general independence, to persons with disabilities or developmental delays. Use therapeutic techniques, adapt the individual's environment, teach skills, and modify specific tasks that present barriers to the individual.

What you’d do

  • Test and evaluate patients' physical and mental abilities and analyze medical data to determine realistic rehabilitation goals for patients.
  • Complete and maintain necessary records.
  • Plan, organize, and conduct occupational therapy programs in hospital, institutional, or community settings to help rehabilitate persons with disabilities because of illness, injury or psychological or developmental problems.
  • Plan and implement programs and social activities to help patients learn work or school skills and adjust to handicaps.
  • Select activities that will help individuals learn work and life-management skills within limits of their mental or physical capabilities.
  • Evaluate patients' progress and prepare reports that detail progress.
  • Train caregivers in providing for the needs of a patient during and after therapy.
  • Lay out materials such as puzzles, scissors and eating utensils for use in therapy, and clean and repair these tools after therapy sessions.

Skills that matter

  • Active Listening
  • Monitoring
  • Service Orientation
  • Critical Thinking
  • Instructing
  • Judgment and Decision Making

How to get there

Extensive preparation: most need graduate school, such as a master's degree or higher

Also called

  • Certified Hand Therapist (CHT)
  • Occupational Therapist (OT)
  • Pediatric Occupational Therapist (Pediatric OT)
  • Registered Occupational Therapist (OTR)
  • Assistive Technology Trainer
  • Early Intervention Occupational Therapist

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