How to become a Occupational Therapy Aide 2024

Occupational Therapy Aide Under close supervision of an occupational therapist or occupational therapy assistant, perform only delegated, selected, or routine tasks in specific situations. These duties include preparing patient and treatment room.

Occupational Therapy Aide is Also Know as

In different settings, Occupational Therapy Aide is titled as

Certified Occupational Rehabilitation Aide (CORA)
Direct Service Professional (DSP)
Direct Support Professional (DSP)
Occupational Rehabilitation Aide
Occupational Therapist Aide (OT Aide)
Occupational Therapy Aide (OT Aide)
Rehabilitation Aide (Rehab Aide)
Rehabilitation Services Aide
Restorative Aide

Education and Training of Occupational Therapy Aide

Occupational Therapy Aide is categorized in Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed

Experience Required for Occupational Therapy Aide

Previous work-related skill, knowledge, or experience is required for these occupations. For example, an electrician must have completed three or four years of apprenticeship or several years of vocational training, and often must have passed a licensing exam, in order to perform the job.

Education Required for Occupational Therapy Aide

Most occupations in this zone require training in vocational schools, related on-the-job experience, or an associate's degree.

Degrees Related to Occupational Therapy Aide

Training Required for Occupational Therapy Aide

Employees in these occupations usually need one or two years of training involving both on-the-job experience and informal training with experienced workers. A recognized apprenticeship program may be associated with these occupations.

Related Ocuupations

Some Ocuupations related to Occupational Therapy Aide in different industries are

What Do Occupational Therapy Aide do?

Encourage patients and attend to their physical needs to facilitate the attainment of therapeutic goals.
Report to supervisors or therapists, verbally or in writing, on patients' progress, attitudes, attendance, and accomplishments.
Observe patients' attendance, progress, attitudes, and accomplishments and record and maintain information in client records.
Manage intradepartmental infection control and equipment security.
Evaluate the living skills and capacities of physically, developmentally, or emotionally disabled clients.
Prepare and maintain work area, materials, and equipment and maintain inventory of treatment and educational supplies.
Instruct patients and families in work, social, and living skills, the care and use of adaptive equipment, and other skills to facilitate home and work adjustment to disability.
Supervise patients in choosing and completing work assignments or arts and crafts projects.
Assist occupational therapists in planning, implementing, and administering therapy programs to restore, reinforce, and enhance performance, using selected activities and special equipment.
Perform clerical, administrative, and secretarial duties, such as answering phones, restocking and ordering supplies, filling out paperwork, and scheduling appointments.
Demonstrate therapy techniques, such as manual and creative arts and games.
Transport patients to and from the occupational therapy work area.
Adjust and repair assistive devices and make adaptive changes to other equipment and to environments.
Assist educational specialists or clinical psychologists in administering situational or diagnostic tests to measure client's abilities or progress.
Accompany patients on outings, providing transportation when necessary.

Qualities of Good Occupational Therapy Aide

Oral Comprehension: The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
Problem Sensitivity: The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing that there is a problem.
Oral Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
Speech Clarity: The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
Speech Recognition: The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
Deductive Reasoning: The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
Written Comprehension: The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
Information Ordering: The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
Written Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
Inductive Reasoning: The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
Category Flexibility: The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
Near Vision: The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
Trunk Strength: The ability to use your abdominal and lower back muscles to support part of the body repeatedly or continuously over time without "giving out" or fatiguing.
Finger Dexterity: The ability to make precisely coordinated movements of the fingers of one or both hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble very small objects.
Static Strength: The ability to exert maximum muscle force to lift, push, pull, or carry objects.
Arm-Hand Steadiness: The ability to keep your hand and arm steady while moving your arm or while holding your arm and hand in one position.
Manual Dexterity: The ability to quickly move your hand, your hand together with your arm, or your two hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble objects.
Fluency of Ideas: The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
Extent Flexibility: The ability to bend, stretch, twist, or reach with your body, arms, and/or legs.
Multilimb Coordination: The ability to coordinate two or more limbs (for example, two arms, two legs, or one leg and one arm) while sitting, standing, or lying down. It does not involve performing the activities while the whole body is in motion.
Time Sharing: The ability to shift back and forth between two or more activities or sources of information (such as speech, sounds, touch, or other sources).
Originality: The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.
Stamina: The ability to exert yourself physically over long periods of time without getting winded or out of breath.
Selective Attention: The ability to concentrate on a task over a period of time without being distracted.
Flexibility of Closure: The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material.
Far Vision: The ability to see details at a distance.
Gross Body Equilibrium: The ability to keep or regain your body balance or stay upright when in an unstable position.
Gross Body Coordination: The ability to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and torso together when the whole body is in motion.
Perceptual Speed: The ability to quickly and accurately compare similarities and differences among sets of letters, numbers, objects, pictures, or patterns. The things to be compared may be presented at the same time or one after the other. This ability also includes comparing a presented object with a remembered object.
Control Precision: The ability to quickly and repeatedly adjust the controls of a machine or a vehicle to exact positions.
Visualization: The ability to imagine how something will look after it is moved around or when its parts are moved or rearranged.
Memorization: The ability to remember information such as words, numbers, pictures, and procedures.
Dynamic Strength: The ability to exert muscle force repeatedly or continuously over time. This involves muscular endurance and resistance to muscle fatigue.
Speed of Closure: The ability to quickly make sense of, combine, and organize information into meaningful patterns.
Mathematical Reasoning: The ability to choose the right mathematical methods or formulas to solve a problem.
Number Facility: The ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide quickly and correctly.
Auditory Attention: The ability to focus on a single source of sound in the presence of other distracting sounds.
Explosive Strength: The ability to use short bursts of muscle force to propel oneself (as in jumping or sprinting), or to throw an object.
Visual Color Discrimination: The ability to match or detect differences between colors, including shades of color and brightness.
Depth Perception: The ability to judge which of several objects is closer or farther away from you, or to judge the distance between you and an object.
Hearing Sensitivity: The ability to detect or tell the differences between sounds that vary in pitch and loudness.
Response Orientation: The ability to choose quickly between two or more movements in response to two or more different signals (lights, sounds, pictures). It includes the speed with which the correct response is started with the hand, foot, or other body part.
Reaction Time: The ability to quickly respond (with the hand, finger, or foot) to a signal (sound, light, picture) when it appears.
Speed of Limb Movement: The ability to quickly move the arms and legs.
Peripheral Vision: The ability to see objects or movement of objects to one's side when the eyes are looking ahead.
Rate Control: The ability to time your movements or the movement of a piece of equipment in anticipation of changes in the speed and/or direction of a moving object or scene.
Spatial Orientation: The ability to know your location in relation to the environment or to know where other objects are in relation to you.
Wrist-Finger Speed: The ability to make fast, simple, repeated movements of the fingers, hands, and wrists.
Glare Sensitivity: The ability to see objects in the presence of a glare or bright lighting.
Night Vision: The ability to see under low-light conditions.
Sound Localization: The ability to tell the direction from which a sound originated.
Dynamic Flexibility: The ability to quickly and repeatedly bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with your body, arms, and/or legs.

Tools Used by Occupational Therapy Aide

Adaptive cutlery
Augmentative communication systems
Beading needles
Braille writers
Canes
Communication boards
Crochet hooks
Crutches
Desktop computers
Dressing sticks
Hand weights
Knitting needles
Lacing needles
Latch hooks
Leather scissors
Multi-line telephone systems
Multi-purpose saw sets
Orthopedic splints
Personal computers
Photocopiers
Power hand sanders
Punching awls
Rasps
Rawhide mallets
Reachers
Rehabilitation training ramps
Rivet setters
Rotary punches
Scooter boards
Sewing machines
Sewing needles
Therapeutic balls
Transfer belts
Wheelchairs
Wheeled walkers
Wood chisels

Technology Skills required for Occupational Therapy Aide

Billing software
Electronic medical record EMR software
MEDITECH software
Microsoft Access
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Office software
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft PowerPoint
Microsoft Word
Scheduling software
Word processing software

US Universities

How to become Occupational Therapy Aide in 2024