Publish date: 5 November 2024
It’s Occupational Therapy Week and the theme is The power of occupational therapy – transforming health and social care.
If you didn’t know, occupational therapy (OT) plays a vital role in health, social care and society, enabling people to manage their health and care needs and do the occupations that they want, need and like to do.
We spoke to our occupational therapist (OT) Bartley Rock, who explains in simple terms what occupational therapy is. He tells us why it’s the NHS’ “secret weapon” and how decorating a gingerbread cookie led this historian to his dream job.
“It’s about helping people live a full and meaningful life by addressing deficits in a way that focuses on what’s important to the person” – Bartley Rock, Clinical Lead Occupational Therapist, Hammersmith & Fulham Mental Health Unit
Q: What is occupational therapy?
Ah the million-dollar question! To be honest that’s one of the questions we spend a lot of our time answering; as the breadth and depth of what occupational therapy covers and what it can do is so varied, there’s no ‘one’ answer to what it looks like. OTs work in A&E, ambulances, social care, mental health, schools, care homes, oncology, neurology, wheelchair services, universities, rheumatology and many, many more.
The best way to describe occupational therapy is that it’s a holistic, person-centred discipline that helps you do the things you want and need to do, especially when these are more difficult because of a disability, illness, trauma, ageing, and a range of long-term conditions. We do this by using meaningful activities to build skills and help you set personalised goals to assist in recovery and improve health and well-being. Some of these goals can include being able to live independently, engaging in work or study, having hobbies you enjoy and being part of your local community.
The way I like to sum it up is ‘Occupational therapy: Helping you get back to being you’!
Why did you become an occupational therapist?
I qualified as an occupational therapist in January 2019 so it’s been nearly six years now (which has flown by!). Since qualifying, I’ve worked in community mental health, medium secure men’s forensics on a dependency ward, low secure men’s on an assertive rehabilitation ward and I’m currently the Clinical Lead Occupational Therapist for the Hammersmith & Fulham Mental Health Unit, an acute admission unit, where I work on a female admission ward. Interestingly, all of these have been for West London NHS Trust; I had a fantastic placement experience in 2018 which convinced me to stay J
Why I became an occupational therapist is a bit of a long and winding story. To sum it up, I used to work in universities as an academic/teaching assistant (I was a historian) but for many different work and personal reasons, I began to feel ‘trapped’ in something I felt was quite repetitive and didn’t have enough ‘impact’. So I began to have a look for a career that felt more meaningful while also letting me use the critical analysis and reasoning skills from academia. After looking at several options, I realised that occupational therapy was for me at an open day where we were split into pairs to decorate a gingerbread cookie; when they revealed at the end that the actual purpose was the working in pairs to help address social anxiety, and the decorating was just a medium to get there, I knew I had found what I wanted to do. That combination of deep analysis and reasoning, working to improve a person’s health and wellbeing and it all being wrapped up in such an everyday occupation struck me as clever, creative and meaningful. In other words, exactly what I had been looking for!
"You might see us play Jenga with a patient but we could actually be working on fine motor control, depth perception, problem solving, tolerating setbacks"– Bartley Rock, Clinical Lead Occupational Therapist, Hammersmith & Fulham Mental Health Unit
Why is occupational therapy important?
I know I’m biased, but I genuinely believe that occupational therapy is the secret weapon of the NHS and social care. I often to refer it as the ‘Swiss Army knife’ of disciplines: it may look small or simple but there’s so many useful tools hidden inside. Occupational therapy is a solution to many of the UK’s health and care needs. By prioritising prevention and early intervention, OTs help people manage their health and reduce the frequency and need for crisis interventions and care services.
From my own practice, I’ve helped a lady in the community reduce her self-harm by 80 percent through a sensory intervention, worked with a service user with severe self-neglect in Low Secure who now self-caters and enters art competitions and used writing rap lyrics to develop a bespoke education and literacy programme for another service user. I’ve also provided more bath boards, toilet frames, stair rails and wheeled walkers than I can count! In my current role, we’ve carried out a wider service re-design so we can work with patients from the moment they are admitted and every group/interaction is a therapeutic intervention.
Overall, occupational therapy is important because, at its core, it’s about helping people live a full and meaningful life by addressing deficits in a way that focuses on what’s important to the person. You might see us play Jenga with a patient but we could actually be working on fine motor control, depth perception, problem solving, tolerating setbacks; the list is almost endless! It builds a foundation for that person to then go and live their life the way they want to. Occupational therapy helps rebuild lives.