Public Speaking With Occupational Therapy Assistants Public speaking is involved in every type of career, just in many different forms. Whether relaying rules to employees or trying to persuade a business to buy your product, public speaking is an important part of everyday communication. With a career I am interested in such as an occupational therapy assistant, public speaking can be used to communicate with your coworkers and patients. By understanding your audience and work environment, you can communicate effectively with others. Occupational therapy assistants help aid patients to recover skills they may be currently lacking in order to function well in the real world (“Summary”). Working under instruction from the occupational therapist, an assistant must communicate well with the occupational therapist and understand direction (“Occupational”). Also, they need to properly explain to the patients what they will be doing that day, specifically what kind of movements and energy they need to produce. If the message is relayed incorrectly because of improper public speaking or communication skills, the patient could …show more content…
Some patients an OTA may come across could have disturbing histories that lead to disorders they suffer from today. For example, posttraumatic stress (PTS) is a mental disorder that can affect the brain of a patient. Often people who suffer from PTS react badly when they hear loud noises, which trigger tormenting flashbacks in the patient’s memory (“What”). Therefore, if you were speaking with people you would know suffer from PTS, you would not want to communicate them in a suddenly loud, excited tone. You, instead, would have to use the skills you acquired from public speaking to understand your audience and speak