What Makes Occupational Therapy Different From Physical Therapy?
If you have ever received orders from your doctor to attend a rehabilitation clinic, such as one of ours at ProTailored Physical Therapy, you may have noticed there is not only physical therapy, but occupational therapy as well. While physical therapy is a more well-known rehabilitation field, occupational therapy is just as important. But what exactly is the difference? Let’s take a look!
Let’s start by giving a simple explanation of the two. Physical therapy aims to improve a person’s function through the use of exercise, manual therapy, and modalities, with the goal of improving strength, balance, endurance, and coordination, just to name a few. Occupational therapy focuses on assisting people in participating in the things that mean most to them, such as daily tasks like getting dressed and bathing, or participating in recreational activities like sports. Based on this description, it is easy to see how these two healthcare fields can overlap. If you have received one of the two, you may already be realizing that the care you received could fit the definitions of both fields. So, let’s take a deeper dive to explain what makes each field unique.
Physical Therapy
What sets PT apart from OT is their ability to treat things such as gait, balance, and to work on the lower body. Physical therapists are uniquely trained to address a person’s overall mobility and the things that may be affecting them. Your PT may assess your walking speed or the pattern of the steps you take. They may work on improving your ability to go from a seated position in a chair to a standing position. They can also provide manual therapy and modalities that will ease pain, in your lower back for example.
Occupational Therapy
As we stated before, occupational therapists aim to improve a person’s ability to participate in the things that mean most to them. When you hear the word “occupation,” you probably think it means the same thing as the word “job.” While that is true in some cases, when talking about occupational therapy, the word “occupation” can be equated to the word “activity.” These occupations can include a variety of things, all of which are essential to a person’s life. These occupations can include
- ADL’s and IADL’s: Activities of daily living, also known as ADL’s, are the basic tasks that a person completes day in and day out. These tasks include, bathing, dressing, eating, and more. IADL’s or instrumental activities of daily living, are the tasks that are not quite as essential to daily life, but are important in keeping health yquality of life. IADL’s can include, housekeeping, transportation, money management, and food preparation.
- Leisure: These are the things that a person does for fun and adds meaning to their life. For some people, a leisure activity may be fishing on a quiet lake, hiking, or playing an intense sport. For others, it can include doing a puzzle or knitting.
- Rest and sleep
- Education
- Social participation
When being treated by an occupational therapist, their approach differs from physical therapy in a couple of ways:
- When treating a patient, the OT will use the activities that the patient will want to get back to within the therapy session. Many times, this looks like activities being simulated, such as simulating cooking or dressing tasks.
- Occupational therapists will look at way to adapt your environment. OT’s are trained to understand what an optimal environmental setup looks like, whether that includes adding or removing aspects of the environment.
- Occupational therapists will look at how adaptive equipment can assist a person in completing an activity. As technology evolves, adaptive equipment has played a large part in helping people accomplish a variety of tasks. Take feeding for example- low technology may include a device as simple as a weighted spoon, whereas technology has become so advanced that robotic arms that feed the person for them are now available.
While there are many areas in which occupational therapy and physical therapy overlap, they certainly have areas in which they are different as well. If you are dealing with pain, loss of strength, or overall dysfunction that is preventing you from living your life to the fullest, call us right away at ProTailored Physical Therapy, where our physical and occupational therapists would love to work with you and get you back to doing the things you love!