Occupational Therapy (OT) is a rehabilitation specialty that focuses on every day and meaningful activities. The goal of an occupational therapist is to ensure you can do everything you want to do on a daily basis as independently and as safely as possible. Treatments that are offered can span across many different areas of one’s life. Here at the IMSMP, we have focused individualized neurologic OT services. This is provided in a one-on-one environment where patients may include their family and caregivers during the OT session. Patients with multiple sclerosis have different needs, desires, and abilities.  Therefore, an individualized session can address the patient’s MS-related impairments, but also those beyond the MS.

During an OT session, the evaluation and treatments include addressing mobility and overall functional needs. In some ways, the session may mimic what can be done in a physical therapy session. A difference in the approach taken by an OT is the goals are more specific to succeeding at completing a desired task. For example, a physical therapist can provide treatments to train a person to safely move from the bedroom to the kitchen, but an occupational therapist will show strategies on how to perform tasks in the kitchen, such as getting food out of the refrigerator or preparing a meal. An OT can help patients learn how to get clothes from their closets and put them on and take them off more effectively. An OT uses strategies that not only incorporate strengthening and flexibility exercise but also integrate cognitive aspects of movement such as organizing tasks and managing fatigue.

OTs have a unique set of skills to consider options for how to adapt a task to make it easier or introducing tools to assist with the tasks to promote a higher level of independence. For example, if a person with MS still performs a task independently, but is starting to have more difficulty or the task is more fatiguing, an OT treatment program may be the difference in one becoming dependent on a caregiver versus keeping that independence.

Activities of daily living (ADLs) are the functions that OT focuses on. This includes your ability to perform feeding, grooming, bathing, toileting and dressing tasks. Another, more complex, area of OT focus is instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs). This category includes meal preparation tasks, home management tasks, caregiving (of pets, elders or children) and more. ADLs are activities that are associated with taking care of one’s own body whereas IADLs are activities within the home/out in the community that supports daily life goals. Often, people with MS find ways to accomplish the tasks associated with ADLs and IADLs, but they may be unsafe and/or may be inefficient which can lead to falls and further disability. An OT program can make a significant difference with this, especially in the long term.

OT professionals are also able to assess functional cognition as well. That means they look at how ones’ thinking and processing pertains to daily and meaningful activities. They then set up a plan with techniques to assist. OT and PT professionals can provide posture re-education, wheelchair screenings, balance training, brace assessments, and transfer training. The other occupational domains that can be focused specifically during an OT session are sleep preparation, education, work (including volunteer), play, leisure, and social participation. These are elements of healthcare that cannot be best provided through physical therapy alone. The OT professionals’ role allows people with MS to appropriately address their impairments from all angles, rather than focusing on exercises alone.

Patients of the IMSMP can call (212) 265-8070 to schedule an appointment with Jaclyn Spechler, OTR/L for an evaluation or you can speak with your neurologist to be referred to an occupational therapist near you.