What is an occupational therapist?

I happen to love asking this question. The variety of responses (or rather guesses made through deductive reasoning - or better yet, plain shot-in-the-dark answers) never fails to give me chuckle, even if just a little. Some examples might be:

• You help people find work (could be true, depending on your practice area)
• You help people return to work after an injury (which, could be very true, as I almost got into this as my first job)
• You tell people what to do (yes, I do. But I like to call it "recommending" or "suggesting")
• You can fix this crick in my neck (I could try but I'll need you to sign a waiver)
• You give awesome massages (I do, but that has nothing to do with my profession)
• I can tell you my life problems and you will listen and tell me how to fix them (I do in fact do this, to some extent)
• You therapize...occupationally (at least use real words, please)
• You weave baskets (yes, somebody did in fact tell me this. Smart ass.)

In fact, despite what our OT programs hound into us, despite that textbook elevator pitch they make us repeat over and over again, I still stand by my opinion that it's just too damn difficult to explain. Our scope is so broad that we really are a jack of all trades (and, some argue we are also a master of nothing. I tend to disagree).

But for those of you who are still confused, here is a general gist of what we do as a profession:


We promote health by enabling individuals to perform meaningful and purposeful activities, in the areas of self-care, productivity,and leisure. Occupational therapists use treatments to develop, recover, or maintain the daily living and work skills of their patients with a physical, mental or developmental condition.


By the way, I love Wikipedia, and will give credit where it is due. I totally stole that since I still find it too difficult to summarize what we ALL do into a single statement.