Occupational Therapy
Burnett Medical Center’s Rehabilitation Department is here to take care of those within our community. This includes physical therapy, and our rehabilitation experts are dedicated to our patients and ensuring you can get back to life.
BMC’s occupational therapist is an integral part of our patients’ lives. Our occupational therapist takes care to improve quality of life for our patients with medical conditions that limit their ability to participate in normal everyday activities. BMC’s OT practitioner treats and cares for patients to be able to promote a healthy lifestyle, prevent or improve living with an injury, illness or disability.
Occupational therapists look at everything you do throughout the day, such as taking a shower, getting dressed, cooking yourself a meal, and focus on improving your ability to perform activities of daily living, including self-care routines, work tasks and leisure activities.
OTs also evaluate each person’s physical environment and their social support systems. From there, they determine what components may be limiting them from being able to complete their activities of daily living, such a range of motion, strength, coordination, endurance, pain or cognition. These limitations could be the result of:
- an acute injury, such as wrist fracture, laceration, sprain or strain, carpal tunnel or tendonitis.
- a post illness decline, such as after having pneumonia or a COPD/CHF exacerbation.
- a post-surgical repair, like a hip fracture, total knee replacement or humeral fracture.
- decline from a chronic condition, such as MS, Parkinson’s, advancing age or dementia.
They are also skilled at identifying equipment and compensatory strategies that patients may need to increase their level of independence and safety.
BMC’s occupational therapist evaluates each patient to create a customized intervention treatment plan that may include:
- Adaptive equipment education and training
- Cognitive testing
- Home safety assessments
- Neurological rehabilitation techniques
- Pain relief modalities
- Range of motion, strengthening and coordination exercises for the upper extremities
- Return to work analysis and training
- Selfcare management and training
- Upper extremity splint fitting and management
Our OT works to understand goals and what type of care is needed for improving an individual's ability to perform important daily activities in order to determine a specialized intervention and outcome plan. Whether helping those with disabilities participate in school and social situations, patients recovering from an injury, or adults experiencing physical and cognitive changes, our team is here for you.