brOT 101

When I first began observing occupational therapy practitioners, I was relatively new to the idea of occupational therapy. I knew the basic idea however, the difference between occupational therapy and physical therapy was still blurry to me. I think one of the most helpful settings I ever observed was an outpatient hospital rehabilitation clinic. In this setting, each department had their own personal office however, there was a common gym where both physical therapy and occupational therapy occurred. This allowed me to see the differences in the therapies on a side by side basis because many of the clients would move from physical therapy and come immediately to occupational therapy. When I think back on gray areas from what I am learning in school, much of the individuals seemed to focus a lot on exercise therapy in both occupational therapy and physical therapy. I think reasoning for this could either be that many times if there was an upper extremity injury, it was sent to occupat

After looking through the various resources, my mind is racing with the different topics that were brought up. The first thing that struck my attention, during a TED talk in which was being presented using sign language, the speaker brought up a very interesting scenario. He discussed him and his wife going through a tour of a Norwegian school for the deaf. In this situation, he was able to interpret for his wife what the individuals were saying because they were using a type of sign language in which she was not familiar. In this moment, he stated that for the first time in their marriage, she was the one with the disability. This struck me because I do not think very often about the fact that disability is relative to the situation we are in. Disability can not be defined as abnormal because normal is also relative to what the situation is. This is why the universalism being discussed is so important. Another thing to consider however, is when this universalism is appropriate. For ex