That forkful of spaghetti and meat sauce makes quite a trip from plate to mouth. It’s a carefully—if unconsciously—choreographed series of moves that, hopefully, end up with the satisfaction of a good meal well eaten. Indeed, most of us never give that mealtime performance a second thought, until we lose some function or other through accident or illness. Then something that looks as easy as one-two-three becomes a painstaking task taking a lot more time than it used to. Whatever the diagnosis behind the problem, it clearly takes a team of helpers to put us back on track.
For occupational therapists, helping a patient get through a meal with all the right utensils is one of thousands of tasks they’re trained to guide people back into. These days, the profession is about a whole lot more than knitting, says Janet Jedlicka, an occupational therapist and PhD-prepared associate professor and chair of the Department of Occupational Therapy. Tucked away on the second floor north of the Hyslop Sports Center, the Department—and its Casper, Wyo., division—is part of the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
“The profession has changed over the last 20 years,” said Jedlicka, herself a graduate of the UND occupational therapy program. “When I went through school in the early 1980s, we used crafts and similar activities to help people become more independent.”
That recalls images of nurses in the World War I era—when occupational therapy first developed as a separate profession—helping wounded and traumatized servicemen recuperate with knitting needles.
“The profession’s focus is still on helping clients remain as independent as possible,” Jedlicka said. “But over the last 25 years, we’ve become more occupation-based rather than using crafts.”
Occupation—the word calls to mind “work” or things we do at work.
But in terms of occupational therapy, the word means any activity that “occupies” one’s time—whether it’s typing on a keyboard at work, cooking at home, or manipulating the television remote control unit.
“Occupations can be anything from employment—and that’s what a lot people think of when they hear the term occupational therapy (OT)—to all the things we do at home or for leisure,” Jedlicka said. “Helping people to get or hold a job is not our primary focus. We want to help people do things that they find valuable and meaningful. It could be fishing, organizing themselves to be able to write, or preparing meals for family.”
Occupational therapy as a profession also has shifted to evidence-based practice. “We’re looking to increase the support for research and documenting that our interventions actually do make a difference,” Jedlicka said. “We’re returning to the roots of our profession, helping service people returning from wars with injuries.”
“We’re helping veterans get engaged in productive kinds of activities,” she said.
“When we started back in the early 1900s, the main work kind of thing was in terms of crafts, such as carpentry, because many people were involved with craft-type work,” Jedlicka said. “Now we have a lot of assistive technology needs in the profession, and we have to be a lot more technically competent.”
For example, one of the department’s faculty members in the Casper, Wyo., facility presented a workshop in “agribility” targeted at helping ranchers and farmers stay in their careers.
“We’re using technology to help maintain farmers and ranchers in their traditional roles, instead of having to give up what amounts to a lifestyle they’ve lived all their lives,” Jedlicka said.
