What makes occupational therapy so different?

If you’ve recently injured yourself at work, your doctor may have encouraged you to seek occupational therapy. However, you may be wondering, “What makes occupational therapy so different?” Luckily, there’s a physical therapy team that can help answer your question.

Our Peak Performance team has years of experience helping people in New Bern, Havelock, Winterville, Swansboro and Jacksonville, North Carolina find the physical therapy they need. One lesson we’ve learned is a patient who understands his or her therapy tends to get more out of it. For this reason, our team is always willing to listen to any concerns or goals you have. We’re also dedicated to answering any questions you have about your therapy, such as, “What makes occupational therapy so different?”

Two aspects that make occupational therapy different

Our team at Peak Performance is aware you may not know what makes occupational therapy different from other types of physical therapy. We can understand your confusion. After all, the first phase of your therapy will focus on helping your injury heal, which is just what our normal physical therapy does. However, there are two aspects of occupational therapy that aren’t always a part of other physical therapy programs.

First of all, our team will include a work conditioning phase into your recovery plan. This phase may overlap with the first part of your therapy a bit, but the focus of it is slightly different. The work conditional phase we use in occupational therapy plans is designed to help you to both continue to heal and help you begin preparing your body to return to work. We’ll accomplish this by having you perform tasks you normally do at your job that are more difficult because of your injury. For example, we may have a carpenter with a shoulder injury spend a few minutes pounding in nails over their head during the work conditioning phase of their recovery.

Another aspect of occupational therapy that’s different is the third phase of such therapy plans, which is work hardening. During this third recovery phase, our team will have you perform work tasks for longer periods of time. Additionally, we may have you do harder tasks than those in the work conditioning phase. We may also help you find ways to include better ergonomic practices into your work tasks.

Since occupational therapy includes these two additional aspects, our plans may provide you with benefits that include:

• Decreasing your recovery time
• Reducing your pain without potentially habit-forming medications
• Lowering your risk of a similar injury in the future

Our Peak Performance team hopes we’ve helped you understand what makes occupational therapy so different from other types of physical therapy. Now, we want to help you get the therapy you need for your work injury. All you have to do to get our help is take one easy step.  

Contact our team today for more information or to schedule an initial appointment.