Make Therapy Your Occupation; Be An Occupation Therapist

Occupational Therapy is a branch of medicine that is an amalgamation of many different branches. It deals with offering people physical and mental comfort and easing their bodily pains or treating their physical deformities or conditions in a natural way.

An Occupational Therapist helps people with any kind of physical deformity or mental disability to operate with minimum discomfort. Their aim is to make their patients self-sufficient and not needing to rely on any support. This is achieved through some specific activities or tasks that the therapist makes their patient do or attempt to do.

The maximum number of cases that come to occupational therapists are pediatric cases, i.e., cases concerning children. The two most common conditions in children that are treated by occupation therapists are autism and cerebral palsy. Apart from these, cases, where the child has a learning disability or some behavioral incompetency, are also brought to occupational therapists. Children who have trouble coping up emotionally are also referred to occupational therapy.

When it comes to adults, the cases mostly include paralysis, injuries in the legs and/or hands, head injuries or injuries to the spinal cord. There are many other neurological, orthopedic and psychiatric conditions that are brought to occupational therapists for treatment.

To follow this profession, you need to undertake a four and a half years long undergraduate course in occupational therapy. You need to clear an entrance test after completing class XII to be eligible to take up this course. The qualification for the course is that must have completed class XII with Science as the stream and Biology as the concentration, i.e., with Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Although, one might get a good job on the basis of their Bachelor’s degree, a Master’s degree in a specialized sub-field of occupational therapy will definitely help in boosting your career.

Some good institutes in India that offer courses in Occupational Therapy are the Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya Institute for the Physically Handicapped, New Delhi; the Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, the National Institute for the Orthopedically Handicapped, Kolkata , and the GGS Indraprastha University, Delhi. Several other institutes also offer such programs.

If one is employed by government hospitals, the basic starting salary ranges from 10,000 INR to 40,000 INR per month. It is less for beginners and interns and escalates with time and experience. Private hospitals may offer occupational therapists anything between 25,000 INR to 70,000 INR per month. For more experienced ones, it is upwards of 80,000 INR on a monthly basis. Some occupational therapists prefer to work independently and open up their own private practice. Such therapists can make around 35,000 INR to 60,000 INR a month.

The job could give way to frustration if the patients do not co-operate or do not respond well to treatment, but it has its upside too. As an occupational therapist, one gets to meet many different people from many different walks of life and gets to interact with them.

To be a successful occupational therapist, one should have excellent diagnostic abilities. Their interpersonal skills should also be very good and strong so that they can connect easily with their patient. A patient attitude is the most important quality needed, as some treatments may stretch over a very long period of time.