What OTs really are...

"We're activity analysts."

This is a phrase a fellow OT at the rehab clinic always said. Behind all the fancy words that describe us as "therapeutic" and "holistic" etc. Whether you graduated with a BSc or an MSc in OT, at the very heart of our profession, we are Activity Analysts!

Much of my placements have been about breaking things down into the smaller steps which has led me to really appreciate our skills in activity analysis. I am a pretty detailed oriented person in my own everyday life, so applying a more critical mind to looking at other's occupations comes naturally to me. But beyond looking at the details, we need to know where to focus our activity analysis on before looking deeper to discover the how's and then seek to understand the why's behind an activity... And this takes a lot more brain power than it does visual acuity. We've got to use that OT lens of ours! Which leads me to this quote:

Thus, the task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen, but to think what nobody has yet thought about what which everybody sees --Arthur Schopenhauer

I couldn't agree more!

The JDA: More than just your job description.

[Lab 2- March 22: Cognitive-behavioural job demands analysis]

Coming out of this lab, and the role playing that was involved in our simulation of conducting the Job Demands Analysis (JDA), made me realize the complexities of the many occupations that we engage in throughout our everyday lives. The JDA brings out the implicit elements and skills that a typical job description would fail to include, bringing attention to some psycho-emotional determinants of occupation compared to a functional assessment or activity analysis. If I ever decide to use this in my future practice, I have to keep in mind that I need to be more resourceful to attain the full occupational profile of my clients. It's unfortunate that the JDA doesn't ask about how the client's different life roles impact her job performance and experience in the workplace. The stresses of her other occupations definitely plays a role in how she demanding she feels her job is at this point in her life. We're not super humans who perform each of our occupations in isolation from each other. As much as we try our best to put one hat away when we put on another, our stack of hats is usually in within our peripheral vision as we carry out certain occupations because we never know when we'll have to switch roles!