What is in a name? – Why non-holistic interventions should not be termed ‘occupational therapy’.

1. Introduction: Have you ever seen a Ferrari Panda or Fiat Testarossa? What about a Lexus Yaris or Toyota Soarer? What about a Nicole Farhi FCUK T-shirt? If you do, please send me a photograph because I never have. This phenomenon has also occurred with Ralph Lauren and Chaps. Companies are using different names to market products in distinct quality brackets. There is a very good reason for this. What do you think a Fiat Panda would do for the image of Ferrari if it was branded ‘Ferrari’? Ferrari would lose out to other super-car producers that were more sensible with maintenance of their brand images. The occupational therapy profession could learn this valuable lesson from industry. This blog entry is a very brief reflection on that thought.

2. Relevance to occupational therapy: Here are a couple of examples of non-holistic service being delivered in the guise of ‘occupational therapy’:

“I work in acute orthopaedics. I have been told due to budgetary constraints my role is only to ensure safe discharge from hospital. I have previously been criticised for improper use of resources when I dealt with quality of life issues.” [1]

“….one of their team leaders told me community occupational therapists only work on equipment and adaptations and cannot provide rehabilitation.” [2]

How do you think this kind of practice is affecting the professional and public images of the occupational therapy profession?

3. The consequences: I recently heard that in one acute setting, physiotherapy has been funded for cardiac rehabilitation but occupational therapy has not. Could this be because the funding authorities have no idea what occupational therapy is, due to the various confusing images we have collectively portrayed while working in reductionist ways? [3] Here is another example of where our profession seems to have lost out due to failure to project a clear image of its remit and potential:

“The Primary Care Mental Health Team told me that they no longer have any occupational therapists on their staff. The woman I spoke to said that even when they did have occupational therapists, they did not provide an occupational therapy service, but worked generically. She actually said "we provide mental health-care; not occupational therapy". I asked her how it was possible to provide mental health-care without occupational therapy, but this question just went over her head.” [2]

Our profession is losing out to other competing professions due to failure to maintain a strong professional image.

4. Conclusion: Perhaps we should change our job titles when not practising holistically. This would prevent non-holistic practice (due to constraints set by public service management) from tainting the image of our profession. Discharge facilitators should simply be called 'discharge facilitators' and the social services team leader who thinks “community occupational therapists only work on equipment and adaptations and cannot provide rehabilitation” [2] should consider re-naming her team ‘the ergonomic adaptation team’ or something similar without the words ‘occupational therapy’ included.

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5. References:
1. Basic grade (2008) Somebody please help me. http://www.cot.org.uk/members/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2289
2. Venth (2008) reality check. http://www.cot.org.uk/members/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2237&postdays=0&pos...
3. Venth (2007) Occupational Therapy First - It is time for our profession to lead; not follow. http://www.metaot.com/blogs/%5Buser%5D-6