Sensible Words In Occupational Therapy

Words often carry enormous weight. Using “sensible” words in this profession provides practitioners with the characteristics of wholesome and meaningful speech. We as occupational therapy practitioners aim to improve quality of life for those around us. The impact of “sensible” words can affect the way we empower, educate and effectively rehabilitate others. The choice is ours, how will our words impact others?

Leaders influence by inspiring and enabling through advice and counsel while managing commands and control individuals. They use “sensible” words that inspire, motivate and persuade while managers use words that discourage, dismiss and dissuade. In this profession, it is important to improve performance and well-being in those we lead,

The “sensible” word for how we provide our service is educating a client not training. In fact, If I were to use the word “train” I ought to be clear about what I prerequisite someone to accomplish when it’s over. Hence, the reason people train is to help them meet a specific objective, whereas, education is a lifelong understanding of skills. Using education as our platform to rehabilitate allows us to use our knowledge to empower an individual to solve an issue given any situation. For example, I rehabilitated a client with COPD and educated her on the importance of energy conservation techniques. Nevertheless, she had full understanding of her condition and why it was important to conserve energy while engaging in various tasks. She had the knowledge to solve any specific situation, however if I just trained her only with techniques of energy conservation maybe she wouldn’t have felt confident solving a problem beyond the skills I’ve taught her. Susan couldn’t have said better “what drew me to OT was the range of creativity I could apply in a variety of situations”. Why not educate others to better help

As an occupational therapy clinician, the “sensible” word would be to rehabilitate someone to health. Susan’s husband made a valid point when he referred to occupational therapists as “creative inventors of new patterns”. Moreover, a treatment is dreadfully specific to an illness as it follows a specific protocol, whereas rehabilitation is customized for everybody. The broad process is our way as OT clinicians as Susan stated, “the best practice is one that engages the excitement in research and produces elevated levels of competency”. Using the word “treatment” can trigger a negative response. For example, I treated a client with anxiety and made the mistake of telling her I would be treating her. Her response was “I am not crazy; I do not need to be treated”. I rephrased my statement to say, “you are now in rehab, we will be educating you about your diagnosis and teach you different techniques to manage during stressful times”. Choosing specific words are extremely important in our profession to effectively communicate with