Top Occupational Therapy Services In Singapore

Occupational therapists are healthcare professionals that enable people to overcome disability and live life independently. Illness and disease can be crippling, affecting one’s ability to live independently, to serve their role as a father, mother, husband, wife, son, daughter or spouse to their loved ones. Occupational therapists can help bridge this gap.

A typical session with an occupational therapist involves an assessment of one’s current functional ability. From there, the therapist would be able to make suitable recommendations based on the best scientific evidence while working with the individual to maximise one’s ability to fulfil what they want to achieve.

Occupational therapy or physiotherapy?

Occupational therapy and physiotherapy are often confused as both professions overlap on many aspects of rehabilitation. Both professions are involved in rehabilitating individuals with functional limitations to minimise the impact of these limitations and focus on the person as a whole to maximise their quality of life.

The main difference is that occupational therapy focuses on improving one’s ability to perform activities of daily living (ADL) by making modifications to your home environment.

Physiotherapy, on the other hand, focuses on improving body movements by working on specific impairments that limit the fluidity of movement.

Here are some clinics that offer occupational therapy and their area of specialisation

Is occupational therapy for me?

Occupational therapists can benefit individuals with various conditions. In Singapore, occupational therapists are involved in the following areas:

• Burns and Plastics Rehabilitation
• Cardiac Rehabilitation
• Driving Assessment and Rehabilitation
• Geriatrics Rehabilitation
• Hand Therapy
• Low Vision Rehabilitation
• Neurological Rehabilitation
• Occupational Health and Ergonomics
• Oncology Rehabilitation
• Psychosocial Rehabilitation
• Paediatrics and Child Development

If you are experiencing some form of limitations following one or more of the conditions listed above and have difficulty in performing activities of daily living (ADL) such as feeding, bathing, dressing, toileting and maintaining personal hygiene then an occupational therapist may help.

Occupational therapists are also involved in gradually easing individuals back to activities such as cooking, gardening or shopping which may be important to you. Or even tasks that may be important for you to return to work such as commuting on public transport, driving, typing on a computer or writing.

For example:

Bob was involved in an accident, resulting in a fracture of his thigh bone. He has since underwent a surgery to fix the fracture and has been referred to an occupational therapist. Following the surgery, the multitude of implications from the accident began to weigh on Bob. Bob found it difficult to shift his leg from side to side in bed and starts to worry how he would have to rely on his wife when he goes home. Bob wonders if his wife would be able to assist him as she is half his size and has also recently had an episode of back pain.

An occupational therapist approaches Bob later that afternoon for a treatment session. With guidance from the occupational therapist, Bob was able to slowly move himself to sit on the side of the bed. Bob practiced undressing and dressing himself, like he would in the toilet. A simple task that is seems insurmountable at the moment as he is unable to bend his hip and knee easily.

By the end of the session, Bob was able to make his way to the toilet, undress himself, relief himself, dress himself and make his way back from the toilet. Something that he thought was impossible at the start of the day. When Bob’s wife came by in the afternoon, the occupational therapist also showed how Bob’s wife can provide some assistance, in case Bob needed help.

I would like to see an occupational therapist, how do I go about seeing one?

If you are unsure about the status of your health, do seek a medical opinion from a medical doctor through polyclinics or your general practitioner. If it is deemed that you will benefit from the services of an occupational therapist, you may engage an occupational therapist through a private clinic, hospital or a restructured hospital directly.

Occupational therapy services in Singapore are regulated by the Allied Health Professions Council and credentials of your therapist can be obtained from the Allied Health Professions Council website.

What can I expect from an occupational therapy session?

A occupational therapy session usually takes 45 to 60 minutes. Each session would usually have variations as the conduct of the session is specific to you and dictated by your therapist.

A typical session would consist of an interview, where the therapist will seek to better understand the background of your condition and the challenges you face. The occupational therapist would also spend some time to find out what is important to you in order to develop treatment goals. These goals may be tasks that are important and meaningful to you, but currently find it difficult to complete due to the limitations you face.

Following which, the therapist may ask you to perform the challenging task. This would provide the therapist with a better understanding of your current ability and aspects of rehabilitation to work on. The therapist will typically share the findings with you, providing you with information on what may help, and discuss the direction of the treatment sessions. The therapist would guide you in targeting these limitations by performing simple exercises or activities that may involve the use of specialised equipment or modification of your home environment.

Your occupational therapist will continue to work with you for a number of sessions ranging from twice a week to once every two weeks based on your needs to work towards the treatment goals. The aim is to gradually reduce the frequency of the sessions and reliance on the therapist and encourage you to self-manage your own condition. Some occupational therapy centres offer home visits, where the therapist visits your home to assess and provide recommendations to better suit your needs.

Feel free to contact any of the top 20 occupational therapy centres to find out more on what to expect. Including details such as expected costs and if MediSave can be used.

What can I do in preparation for my occupational therapy session?

Occupational therapists help to increase your participation in activities of daily living within your home and work environment. Therefore, within the clinic setting, the information you provide during the occupational therapy session would determine how and what is recommended for you.

Preparing information about your home environment, details of the activity you want to be able to do and availability of family members that may provide assistance may help make the treatment session more fruitful. As the occupational therapist would like to work on things that are important to you, it would be good to reflect on what you may want to achieve from the session.

In subsequent sessions, it is important provide feedback on what worked for you and what did not. This may provide the therapist with the ability to adjust the exercise prescribed and fine tune recommendations for you. Exploring variations to the recommendations within reason and highlighting how you responded to those variations may be helpful.

Editor’s Note:

Disclaimer: While every precaution has been made to ensure the accuracy and fairness of this listing, we acknowledge that they may be inaccuracies. Therefore, we urge you to contact the service provider above for the correct information and/or contact us with the correct information. If you have a medical condition, it is always better to consult with a certified health care professional directly instead of relying on any material in this website or any other literature.

If you are a service provider and wish to be featured in this listing (MediaOne reviews are read by hundreds of thousands of Singaporeans), please contact us at [email protected]. There is no charge! Please allow us up to 3 working days to review before adjusting the information or including your entry.

Author Bio

Tom Koh is widely recognised as a leading SEO consultant in Asia who has worked to transform the online visibility of the leading organisations such as SingTel, Capitaland, Maybank, P&G, WWF, etc. Recently he was instrumental in consulting for a New York-based US$30B fund in an US$4Bn acquisition. Tom is a Computational Science graduate of the National University of Singapore. In his free time he performs pro-bono community work and traveling.
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