For my second post I will be talking about health as well as
mentioning a few theories promoting health. Health can be defined in many different
ways, one being “the complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being
and not just the absence of disease or infirmity.” The promotion of health is
the use of discipline specific techniques to assist people in achieving their
health related goals. Occupational therapy directed health promotion is the
client centered use of occupations, adaptations to context, or alteration of
context to maximize individuals’, families’, communities’, and groups’ pursuit
of health and quality of life. Health promotion is a process of maximizing
health through structured interventions. Before an appropriate theory can be
selected for a health promotion initiative, a clear understanding of the health
and occupation needs and desires of those being served is required. One of the
first and most widely used models in health promotion is called the Health
Belief Model (HBM). The basis of this model is the balancing of threats with
barriers of taking the recommended action and the potential benefits. A key
component to this model is self-efficacy. Another model is the Social Cognitive
Theory (SCT). The SCT is a model that is a good fit for occupational therapy
health promotion program development and evaluation due to its emphasis on “how”
to change behavior, the importance placed on self-efficacy, and mastery gained
through doing. This type of approach promotes effective self-management of
health habits that keep people healthy through their lifespan.
For this post I decided to discuss just what a therapeutic relationship is and what it entails. A therapeutic relationship is defined as the interaction between an occupational therapist practitioner and their client. Therapeutic relationships differ from everyday relationships, in that they are key in facilitating the healing and rehabilitation process. They also differ from the typical relationship in that it's not about both people but strictly about the client and meeting their needs. Developing and sustaining therapeutic relationships involves the ability to develop trust, demonstrate empathy, understand verbal and nonverbal communication, and the use of active listening. Trust is one of the most important aspects in any type of relationship to me. Once trust is obtained the client feels more comfortable with sharing personal information which in turn greatly benefits the intervention process. Developing empathy is another huge part of this process, the client must believe tha...
Comments
Post a Comment