Hi Angela; I appreciate your perspective. We are definitely looking for both sides of the conversation. I do believe that support from your team can be crucial to your success as an OT. The American League of Functional Therapists is primarily attempting to popularize OT services without requiring a 1:1 interaction with an OT. In my practice I frequently reference that I am Occupational Therapist and reference what I am doing as Occupational Therapy, despite this I am often introduced glowingly as their "Physical Therapist." Often, when he patient does introduce me as an Occupational Therapist, the family member will identify me as a Physical Therapist. Has this happened to you? Do you think it's very often that Physical Therapy gets mistaken for Occupational Therapy? Did you get a chance to check out the website at www.FunctionalTherapist.org<http://www.functionaltherapist.org/>or the blog at www.RegisteredFunctionalTherapist.Blogspot.com<http://www.registeredfunctionaltherapist.blogspot.com/>? These can shine a lot of light on the project.
Tell me more about yourself, how did you find OT and decide to go into it? For me it was more luck. I would not have even known about it unless I took the prerequisite communication course. It was based on my exposure to a course that exposed me enough to the field. I took the other prereq course the next year before solidly deciding to dedicate my life to it. Can you tell me how you usually explain OT and what types of responses you usually get? Our organization (ALOFT) was formed in April and did not take applications until May. We require all members to be licensed OTs and licensed OTAs in order to join. The protections of the license do only come from the OT license. We may explore a legal protection path at some point but for now it is a member organization which allows qualified members to use the trademarked titles. Let me know how that comes across on the website. In terms of our establishment internationally, I agree it is a big barrier. I think some kind of change made earlier would have helped. For instance, the OT definitions of Occupation and Occupational are not in the dictionary currently. I think we are where we are right now and we can try and go forward with something that might help us to be more accessible to our patients. Currently we seem to be one generation from anonymity (patients may know about us, but their children often don't). Also, we want to help doctors who are trying to decide on the best treatments and services for their patients. And beyond that, we are looking to make the profession more understandable to higher administration who are deciding how to staff the therapy departments. We can never rest on our laurels. I have been using the title of Registered Functional Therapist in my own practice and I find it completely avoids the "I'm retired, leave me alone." I have recently learned that even a 27 year PT who has worked side by side with me for years (and even co treated with me) thought OT was about jobs until I introduced the ALOFT project. I'm dedicated to the method and philosophy of OT, not the title. What do you see in the future for OT? I look forward to hearing your perspective, Ed Kaine, OTR/L, RFT President of the American League of Functional Therapists "Functional Therapy... the Next Generation of Occupational Therapy!" On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 7:32 AM, Angela King (ADHB) <[email protected]>wrote: > Hi all, > I'm one of the newbies so thought I'd jump right in. Not too sure how > to do this but we'll see what happens. > > I would like to comment on the Functional Therapist title. I guess my > concern with that is that it fragments OT's even more and will just > confuse people even further about what we do. I agree that there is > always a bit of a problem with explaining what we do and people being > able to identify our scope of practice. There is no easy answer to that > except what you can achieve as an individual OT by differentiating > yourself in your team and with your clients. > > I really don't get this issue very much in my place of work and that is > because all members of our team have good understanding and great > respect for the role of OT so the client gets it from all corners. We > also provide written information explaining the role of each member of > the team. > > I have worked in places in the past where this has been an issue and in > my experience it was the places where people on my own team hadn't a > clue what OT was. If you can get your team on board (easy said than > done I bet!) I think it makes a big difference. In our team the biggest > influence I feel is the consultant doctor, if they value what we do they > will project this to the client and the rest of the team and it flows > from there. > > I acknowledge that our meaning of occupation is quite different to what > most people think of, but I feel that as a profession we are too > established internationally to go changing that. You'd never get > everyone to agree. It would be better to continue promoting the > role/meaning of occupational therapy than confuse people even more. > > Angela > > > > > -- > Options? > www.otnow.com/mailman/options/otlist_otnow.com > > Archive? > www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] > -- Options? www.otnow.com/mailman/options/otlist_otnow.com Archive? www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
