Research Assignment Paper: Pediatric Field Work Essay

Pediatric Field Work Essay
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Institution
Pediatric Field Work Essay
Essentially, occupational therapy (OT) involves the actions of a therapist to help people across a given lifespan to be able to do things that matter to them and to which they need to do. Occupational therapy utilizes the everyday activities of the patient or the persons involved in the therapy. Occupational therapy is commonly applied in helping children with disabilities so that they can participate in social situations and school activities, helping people recovering from injury to attain their previous skills and offering support to elderly people among others. During my pediatric occupational therapy fieldwork, I observed the occupational therapy session in Middle school with children age 4-7 years old in the occupational therapy office. The therapist work with the children to increase their upper extremity strength, fine and gross motor to help them write properly, visual presentation, children with sensory integration problem, children with autism. She used different techniques to help the children such as play, painting, educate how to tight their shoes and buttons or zip their jacket. This paper presents the findings on why OT would be important in this setting, areas that the OT practitioner would address, client factors that would influence (negatively or positively) the client/caregiver’s ability to engage in the setting, evidence based interventions an OT would employ to address these occupations and a job description for an OT that would fit in this setting.
OT would be necessary in a school setting with autistic children because it helps students carry out tasks vital for learning or participation in school activities. The therapists help the children in developing skills for fine motor skills, handwriting and daily living. They help the children in alleviating their sensory processing disorders and remove barriers to learning while at the same time helping them become calm and focused. Also, therapists work with school staff in offering consultation on how classes should be designed or how a classroom design will affect their learning and attention, how to arrange the seating arrangement for autistic learners and to explain the unusual behaviour exhibited by such learners at certain times. Therefore, a therapist is essential in this setting to help the autistic learners develop learning skills and carry up with their participation in learning.
A therapist working with autistic learners in a school set up has varied areas of occupation to address. One area is fine motor where the therapist helps the learners in coordination difficulties, information processing and organization. These involve writing properly and organizing their writings and paintings. Another area is self-care which involves activities such as dressing, toileting, tightening their shoes and zipping their clothes. Self-care is aimed at enabling the learners to be independent beings who can perform such activities on their own. Also, the therapist works with the learners to improve their visual presentations. These include visual paintings and drawings. Aside, the therapist addresses the behaviour patterns such as play to encourage the children to reinforce desir...