Skip to main content

The Therapeutic Relationship

In today's class, we learned about what a therapeutic relationship is and how we as future occupational therapists can maintain the best relationships with our clients as possible. A therapeutic relationship is simply an interaction between an OT practitioner and a client. The goal of this relationship is for the client to be the focus and to benefit from every interaction. According to our textbook, this relationship differs from others in that it is key for facilitating the healing and rehabilitation process. Every interaction between the OT and client should be purposeful and aimed toward achieving a common goal. 
An OT can develop trust in this relationship by being on time for appointments, being honest with the client, and avoiding making empty promises. Empathy is an important aspect of the therapeutic relationship, being defined as the ability to place oneself in another person’s position and understand the other’s experience. It is the emotional exchange between an OT and client to allow for more open communication, resulting in a better therapeutic relationship.The therapeutic use of self is another vital tool that a practitioner can use. This involves using ones knowledge, personality, insights, and judgments to benefit the interaction with the client. A therapist can use techniques such as humor, empowerment, redirection, and effective verbal and nonverbal communication to establish the most positive therapeutic relationship with every client. I think these skills are all achieved through natural interpersonal skills and experience, and I plan to implement all of them when I am a practicing occupational therapist. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Fundamentals of Caring Review

For this assignment, I decided to watch a movie called The Fundamentals of Caring. The title of this movie had caught my eye while scrolling through  Netflix  a few times before, but I had never taken the time to watch it.  This movie is about a retired author named Ben who decides to enroll in a class and become a caregiver. He takes on a full time job caring for a boy named Trevor who has muscular dystrophy. Although Ben has no previous experience as a caregiver, it does not take long for him to gain the respect of Trevor. He decides to get Trevor out of the house and away from his dull daily routine to embark on a road trip together. Trevor saw and experienced things that he would never have had the chance to do before Ben came into his life. Ben made sure that Trevor could check things off of his bucket list without solely focusing on the worry of medicines and treatments for a week. My main takeaway from this movie was how Ben did not treat Trevor differently...
5 comments
Read more

Leadership Summit Reflection

I met with my fellow classmates Rachel Scarbrough, Emily White, and Caitlyn White for my leadership summit. We discussed our ideas and current plans for group facilitation, as well as the theories that we based our protocols on. Rachel is presenting on budgeting, Emily is presenting on volunteer opportunities, and Caitlyn is presenting on care of pets. I enjoyed getting to hear their ideas since we all are facilitating different group discussions. Brainstorming with my classmates really helped me come up with more ideas for my group protocol. I think it is important to collaborate with fellow colleagues in the school and professional setting in order to not only help you think your own ideas through, but also to receive feedback from others who might be able to add more creativity to your plan. I will absolutely do this when I am a practicing OT. I enjoyed this experience and found it to be very beneficial for this group assignment.
1 comment
Read more

Journal Article Review

The article I chose to review was titled  The Benefits of Group Occupational Therapy for Patients With Parkinson’s Disease. I found this article through AJOT, and chose it because I am very interested in Parkinson's Disease interventions. This study looked at how progressive physical symptoms of Parkinson's disease affect participation in activities of daily living.  The aim of the study was to see whether a group rehab program using an OT approach specifically designed for IPD, in association with ideal medical management, could maintain the functional status of these patients.  A two group experimental design was used in this study. Individuals with Idiopathic Parkinson's disease were randomly assigned to either an experimental group receiving group occupational therapy intervention, or a control group receiving only medicinal treatment.  Immediately after randomization, the  experimental group received 10 sessions of group occupational therapy....
Post a Comment
Read more