Skip to main content

What is the OTPF?

   The OTPF, which stands for Occupational Therapy Practice Framework, is one of the major tools that OTs utilize today. It summarizes all of the most important ideas that guide OT practice, identifies the scope of practice for OT, and gives OTs a common language to improve communication within the field. The OTPF highlights domains of concern, or areas that OTs are concerned about and address.  All of these domains influence how a client might perform their occupations, or daily meaningful activities. We usually don't even think about most occupations that we perform on a daily basis unless they are taken away or there is a barrier that makes completing that occupation more difficult. The OTPF guides OTs in their evaluation, intervention, and assessing outcomes of patients with the overarching goal of "supporting health and participation in life through engagement in occupation."


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why Universal Design?

In his TED talk, Michael Nesmith explains, via a translator, why we need universal design. The term "universal design" was coined by Ron Mace, and is defined as "the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design." Clearly, as a man with hearing issues, Michael has a unique perspective on the topic of universal design. A helpful illustration given during his talk has to do with a doorknob. Maybe you haven't ever given doorknobs much thought (I sure hadn't before this TED talk), but that's usually how it goes for people who have no issues using a one on a daily basis. What about people using wheelchairs, or a mother pushing a stroller? Doorknobs become a bigger issue to those who do not have complete accessibility to them. However, a simple solution was created to fix this issue: the automatic sliding door. Michael explains, "This is such a univer...

Children's Hand Skills Framework (CHSF)- OT Theory

The Children's Hand Skills Framework is a conceptual tool used to describe and analyze children's hand skills during assessment and intervention. The CHSF divides hand skills into 6 categories, based on the extent to which their hands are in contact with objects or parts of the body or not. These categories include manual gesture and body contact; these two categories do not involve contact with a specific object. The next categories are object-related hand skills, adaptive skilled hand use, bimanual use. The final category is general quality of hand use skills, such as accuracy or pace of children's hand skills. The population targeted with this theory, as indicated by the title, is children, and involves any diagnosis. Hand skills adequate enough to enable children to participate in daily occupations are considered functional in this framework. Object-related hand skills include actions such as reaching, turning/rotating, throwing, or catching an object. Adaptive skilled ...

Mock Interview Reflection

To prepare for this mock interview, I read through a few common OT-related interview questions and thought through my answers. I was originally planning to type out my answers, but I decided instead to only list bullet points to reflect on so that I did not come across as too scripted/rehearsed. I recently interviewed for a level II fieldwork rotation at St. Jude, and I went more in depth to prepare for that than I did for this interview in particular. Because of this, I felt like I had a good foundation going into this interview. Overall, I felt like the interview went well. I was able to answer all the questions without too much hesitation, and I felt like I answered them sufficiently, although I could have gone more in depth in some answers. Something that went differently than I expected was that I talked faster than I normally do. I learned that it is okay to take a pause and think through my answer before speaking in order to provide a more in-depth and full ans...