We were told to read the WFOT Position Statement on Human Rights which has the purpose of stating the World Federation of Occupational Therapists (WFOT) 'position on human rights in relation to human occupation and participation.' When I was reading it for some reason the fact that the word 'occupation' was in nearly every line just made me think about the word and everything that is attached to it. Maybe it is also to do with the fact that I have been exposed to so many different definitions and explanations of the word that I still do not really know what it is, which is weird because I am studying to be an Occupational Therapist.
Here is examples from the paper to illustrate what I am talking about:
'People have the right to participate in a range of occupations that enable them to flourish, fulfil their potential and experience satisfaction in a way consistent with their culture and beliefs'
'People have the right to be supported to participate in occupation and, through engaging in occupation, to be included and valued as members of their family, community and society'
'People have the right to choose for themselves: to be free of pressure, force or coercion; in participating in occupations that may threaten safety, survival or health and those occupations that are dehumanising, degrading or illegal'
This paper is speaking from an Occupational Therapy perspective and because we are Occupational Therapist then we may say it is obvious why occupation comes into everything and is so important. But I don't actually think it is that obvious because why occupation? Why is occupation so important? And quite honestly what is occupation? Most people don't fully understand occupation and how rich the word occupation actually is which is okay but us as OT's owe it to ourselves and our clients to understand this concept of 'occupation' that is central to our field of practice. WFOT defines Occupational Therapy as a 'profession concerned with promoting health and well being through occupation' so our therapy is THROUGH OCCUPATION. Because of this we should view humans and their occupation through very different eyes compared to the rest of the world. Instead of looking at a client and thinking this person has poor range of motion, poor memory, grade 2 muscle strength etc we think or at least we should think what are the occupational problems so what are the difficulties that they are having in order to be engaging in what they want to or need to. But when occupation is so hard to define or pin point its not that easy to identify these 'occupational challenges' that the person is facing.
All occupational therapists dread the question 'what is occupational therapy?' and I believe this is the reason why we hate it. Because occupation can be simple but at the same time it can be so complicated. Occupation can be defined as 'anything that people do'. There plain and simple. But then what is anything and why do we do that anything or in what way or when do we do that anything. We should be the one's that understand the complexity of occupation. Occupations are not just something that happen to us, we engage in them in a very active sense.
I think one of the big problems with us as OT's is that we get stuck in this literally 'active' sense of occupation so we think ah but you just sitting there you not doing anything. But one does not need to be physically doing something in order to be 'actively' involved in an occupation. We may look at an old man sitting staring out a window thinking as doing nothing and not being engaged in an occupation. But him sitting there thinking about his childhood and memories from his youth well that is an occupation.... Ya not so simple anymore... What is also complicated about occupation is the exact same occupation for example going for a run can be very different in terms of meaning, purpose and importance for two different people.
Something that can help this pickle about occupation and its importance is an example I saw where an HIV positive patient measured his health in terms of his occupations. He was not interested in his CD4 count and all the rest but instead identified his health status in terms of his changes in occupation, his occupational patterns and the occupations he could and couldn't do. I find that interesting because that is actually how we should be viewing people and their illness as OT's. But because occupation is so hard to pinpoint we often move towards treating memory or treating muscle strength because it sometime seems easier but at the end of the day we are beyond those individual components of memory, tone, joint range, coordination etc we are the bigger OCCUPATION picture and we need to not be afraid and allow ourselves to view the world through different eyes and make use of our very specialised skills and expertise. But easier said than done.. its not that simple
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