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[av_heading heading=’The Top Traits All Online Occupational Therapists Need’ tag=’h1′ style=’blockquote modern-quote modern-centered’ size=” subheading_active=” subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”][/av_heading]
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Online Occupational Therapists help clients maximize their lives by enabling them to engage in activities that create a sense of meaning and purpose. Succeeding can be difficult because whereas functionality can be measured according to certain parameters, creating a sense of meaning and purpose cannot. What to one client is important to another has no meaning at all.
While being a successful occupational therapist has a lot to do with quality education and training, there is another critical ingredient that has nothing to do with either. Specifically, these are certain character traits that therapists are either born with or gradually develop through experience throughout the course of their careers. While the list is more extensive than those below, these three are the most critical.
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1. Patience
Occupational Therapists know that nothing tries their patience more than struggling to reach specific goals and never seeming to make any headway. Many of their clients regularly fight with negative emotions and thoughts. They are easily frustrated, often angered, easily distracted, and quick to despair when they cannot accomplish something that is important to them.
So, it is critical that online occupational therapists be extremely patient with their clients. They need to be tolerant of a certain amount of floundering, confusion, and false starts. While it is only natural for the therapist to adopt negative attitudes, this will only further frustrate their clients. And they certainly cannot take things personally. It is essential to realize that growth and improvement take time.
2. Creativity
Creativity is at the very core of the online occupational therapist’s daily challenge. Aside from their clients being emotionally and mentally challenged with therapy, sometimes they don’t understand what their therapist expects of them, or why they succeed or fail at certain tasks. This lack of understanding makes it harder to encourage the client to try new things. That is where creativity comes in and can make all the difference.
Successful online occupational therapists find ways to help their clients overcome their fears and frustrations. They find the means to help those with whom they are working to achieve things they never dreamed possible. It is important to remember that nothing the occupational therapist does comes packaged neatly in a box. Although many believe that creative problem solving is simply brainstorming, there is much more involved.
Creativity is quite difficult to teach; either the therapist does or doesn’t have it. If the client won’t be able to adjust to a particular plan or challenge, it’s up to the OT to find a way to help figure it out. Instead of taking a child to a rehabilitation center to learn balance, the OT could go to a gym, where the client can be with other kids who may not have the same disabilities.
3. Organizational Skills
And finally, while strong organizational skills are helpful to anyone’s success, they are a must for occupational therapists. Aside from managing their schedules, they also have to manage the schedules of multiple clients simultaneously. And that management challenge is increased by the fact that they are sometimes unable to fit those receiving help into “standard” scheduling models.
Organizational skills are needed as well to deliver thoughtful and well-planned online occupational therapy treatments. The successful occupational therapist tends to be an organizational freak, maintaining the flexibility to work with people who are almost always less organized. And the needs of their clients will vary. While some will require more help than others, all of them need their occupational therapist to be on top of it all.
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