Essay Sample on Occupational Therapy: Professional Qualifications to Enhance Recovery

Introduction

Occupational therapy involves a type of treatment that facilitates people who have suffered from various illnesses recuperate and live a healthy life. The mode of practice enables all diverse patients to lead and adapt to a new life, depending on their conditions while participating in daily and regular activities. Occupational therapy is a highly sensitive practice that requires extreme knowledge and skills. Endorsing the medical practice requires professional qualifications, knowledge, and therapists who can handle and maintain high ethical standards. Therapists who engage in the occupation can help individuals living with particular disabilities, injuries, pain, and illnesses to adapt to activities. The individuals can undertake school work, jobs, moving around, taking care of themselves, household duties, and more.

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As observed above, Occupational therapy involves handling individuals with particular health complications. It's a highly sensitive practice that requires maximum observation of the code of ethics to ensure the integrity and protection of clients to maintain the utmost confidentiality and transparency in the industry. The industry requires occupational therapists to observe high integrity and understand the consequences of breaking ethical codes. The guidelines play a vital role in ensuring that professionals maintain high integrity and also to protect the clients both emotionally and physically towards adapting a healthy and normal life. It's also vital for occupational therapists to stay up to date with ethical codes guiding the industry and also follow up on continuing education on ethical codes and standards for an excellent performance.

The need for professional and ethical standards promotes efficiency in running the industry. While handling individuals with particular disorders to adapt a normal life, it requires occupational therapists to follow a specific code of ethics to maintain integrity. Rehabilitating individuals to establish an experience where they can participate in everyday life activities involves commitment, dedication, and professional skills. The professional addresses psychological, physical, sensory-perceptual, cognitive, and other perspectives that enable the individuals to live a healthy and proactive life.

Borton (1970) provides Gibbs reflection cycle that outlines a simple reflective model as a reflective ladder for Occupational therapists to observe as a guideline. The particular model comprises of three questions that should be asked towards handling a specific condition in helping a patient. The questions include what? So what? Now what? The model questions advocates for the creation of a particular guideline that novice and professional practitioners should use to achieve a particular goal, as Jasper (2003, p99) calls it "real world of practice." The model can enable practitioners to construct a workable Action Plan to allow them to figure out the most appropriate approach to handle a particular condition and enable the affected individual to adapt to new life skills fast and easy.

Formulating a workable Action Plan makes it easier for Occupational therapists to help the patients adapt fast while observing maximum ethical conduct required by bodies regulating the industry. The Code of ethics governing the sector must provide assurity to the patients and individuals seeking Occupational Therapeutic Services. It should also offer professional to practitioners and thus safeguarding the interests of the stakeholders. Considering that the industry is highly sensitive in nature, Ethical standards put in place reflect on the dynamic nature of the profession in both practitioners and individuals/patients' interests and perspectives. It evolves around the healthcare environment and also the emerging technologies that may pose ethical concerns in all dimensions from practice, research, and education (Jasper, 2003). Once a practitioner decides to enroll in Occupational Therapeutic Practice, one has to commit to providing inclusive participation, ensure safety, and keep in mind the wellbeing and health of recipients. The practices vary from various conditions and delivered to individuals at different stages in life from kids, adults, and the elderly by empowering the recipients their daily occupational needs.

Undertaking the Occupational Therapy profession requires one to get the vast regulations and rules governing the profession. Commitment and dedication also is an added value as it helps you to undertake the profession precautious. Handling individuals with various health requirements requires individuals with high moral values that enable professional practice. A firm Action Plan to emulate comes from observing and learning how to undergo a patient through Bortons' (1970) flection model. The first question, what? It guides the learner to take the patient through diagnosing the causes of the health condition that requires them to go through Occupational Therapeutic Treatment. Having the skills enables the practitioner to ascertain how the condition started, what happened, what the individual did, and develop a systematic approach on how to assist the patient. The next preface of the Action plan involves the context on what next after diagnosis. A skilled professional needs to understand the requirements of each particular case and establish the most appropriate Occupational procedure in perspective of the specific condition. The next phase of the Action Plan enables professionals to understand now what? As a practitioner, one needs to gather adequate information on the synthesis, have to formulate several approaches on how to handle each particular condition. Maintaining confidentiality and integrity remains a significant observation during service delivery. Referring to ethical codes put in place by the health system facilitates the practitioners' service delivery progress. It's necessary to understand the legal protocol of handling emergencies, learning through service delivery experience, and also have a professional approach on how to improve the condition.

The action plan requires continuous learning progress that helps practitioners stay updated on the current ethical issues in the industry, changes in technology, and streamlining measures that promote the welfare of providing professional medical practice in the industry. It requires critical analysis to understand the complexity of the condition and offer a systematic approach. One must have the skills to resolve issues, improving the situations on where to make it better the next time they offer the services. An Action Plan that involves Gibbs's reflection cycle makes it easier for professional practitioners to create opportunities for reflective practice. It encourages Occupational therapists to collaborate, share ideas towards strengthening and promoting the growth of instructional practices. Creating a conclusive description provides an analysis of the occurrence of the condition and understanding what happened, when, where, the involved parties, the steps taken, and understanding the result of the action taken. With such information, the practitioner can simulate most appropriate action to take.

Guiding the patient to express the feelings also involves a significant step towards gaining knowledge, observations, and the experience of the patient. One can also ask questions like the situation or feeling before and after, how other people felt, thought about the condition before and after. The questions enable the practitioner to ascertain the current status of the situation so that they may develop the most concise measures to handle the situation. While asking the questions, the practitioner needs to ensure extreme caution and observe ethical standards to protect the patients' interests. Here, a practitioner should avoid evoking negative comments that may accelerate the patient's condition. Any therapy requires maintenance of the core values, standards of conduct, and higher levels of creating decision-making parameters. Every practitioner has to comply with a moral character and mindful reflection while keeping in mind that the profession is a commitment to helping others (Schell, Gillen, Scaffa, & Cohn, 2013).

An occupational therapy practitioner must assess and comprehend the results of the initial assessment. One needs to evaluate their service provisions and whether they dealt with the condition while observing maximum ethical conduct. True reflection covers the positive and negative aspects of the results. The evaluation will enable a practitioner to determine all the elements that will promote their profession towards improvement and growth. One could evaluate the performance while observing the good and the bad if the procedure fulfilled it's purpose, failures, and the contribution of other people. While watching the measures taken, a practitioner is required to observe the seven core values of Occupational Therapy. The values include Altruism, Equality, Freedom, Justice, Dignity, Truth, and Prudence. Observing the core values enables a practitioner to maintain and observe the welfare of the patient in terms of equality, freedom, and personal choice. A practitioner must ensure equality without practicing bias on any basis. Professional and ethical standards in Occupational Therapy should provide justice in diverse communities where it needs to include organized structures that ensure maximum satisfactory towards service delivery. One also needs to have natural virtue towards the nature of the practice to address inequalities through engaging professional practice, as Schell, Gillen, Scaffa, & Cohn (2013) suggest.

When performing analysis, one is required to synthesize the events that happened during therapy treatment sessions. The details around the entire process can provide a meaning for your practice. It gives professional therapists to ascertain their skills in professional service delivery. One can ask themselves several questions as to why things happened right or wrong. The observations and extracting a sense of the situation let's a professional to weigh the skills, performance, and expertise. The knowledge collected here can help a professional gauge where ethical standards and code of conduct was observed to the maximum. One has to handle individual patients with dignity to protect their interests and deliver professional services (Creek & Lougher, 2011). Fully fledge practitioners also need to observe professional behaviors, which include Beneficence, Nonmaleficence, Autonomy, Justice, Veracity, and Fidelity, which are also referred to as guidelines for ethical decision-making. The instructions foster for practitioners to observe the wellbeing and safety of the recipients of their services for maximum service delivery. A profession is required to observe moral values that include charity, mercy, and kindness (Beauchamp & Childress, 2013). One has to protect the patient's rights, keep their interest confidential, prevent harm, and ensure maximum satisfaction in service delivery.

Providing accurate Occupational Therapeutic services requires professionals to provide independent evaluation for every patient's progress. Also, having a plan for intervention is necessary to ensure the recipients of the services offered to fulfill their needs by all means. Assing and reevaluating recipients on time help a practitioner in determining if the goals are met and whether it's necessary to intervene in the plan or revise the policy. The code of ethics and standards provides measures and techniques to observe when intervening to ensure the interest of the patient is observed. Before practicing Occupational Therapy Profession, one has to register with bodies governing the ind...