We caught up with our Occupational Therapist, Meijie, to understand more about the work she is doing to support our children in maximizing their developmental potentials.
Q: Can you share with us your background?
MJ: I graduated from Nanyang Polytechnic in Occupational Therapy and started my first job in Paediatrics which is my area of interest and passion. In the past 16 years of work, I ventured across various work settings working with patients of different medical conditions, and also in the administrative area such as teaching and auditing. Nonetheless, I spend the bulk of my years in Paediatrics.
Q: When will a child require Occupational Therapy?
MJ: Occupational Therapy intervention can be beneficial when we observe our children experiencing difficulty in performing activities that are essential to the child e.g. activities of daily living, sleeping; activities that are meaningful to the child e.g. playing; as well as activities that define the role of the child in the community e.g. student.
Q: How is assessment of the child and setting of goals being carried out?
MJ: Depending on the outcome the child's caregiver, family and the attending therapist would like to achieve from the assessment, as well as the time allowance, the therapist can use a combination of clinical observation and various partial or full standardized assessment tools.
I think it is important to give consideration for the reason the caregiver or family has brought the child in for an assessment or therapy intervention. There are various Occupational Therapy frameworks and models that therapist adopts depending on the particular child and accompanying situation. The former guides the therapist in the setting of goals that are appropriate to the child.
Q: What are the common challenges you encounter in your job?
MJ: In trying to find a balance for parents to align with the therapy intervention on a regular basis, apart from the weekly therapy session. This involves helping parents to understand their child's condition, the direction, and management method for intervention, and incorporating them into the child's daily routine, purposely and subtly. Considerations have to be given to the caregiver's spoken and unspoken difficulties in implementing suggested interventions, the therapist will revise their recommendations accordingly. Ultimately, the intervention and recommendations are to help ease caregiver stress and not to add burden with the additional home programs.
Q: What are your proudest moments?
MJ: I would say happier moments...to see the child making good progress myself, to hear from the caregiver on the child's positive progress, to know that the family is happier and experiencing reduced stressor with improved quality of life because of the improvement the child has made and/or the caregiver and family has a better understanding of the child's condition and thus better able to care for the child.
Q: How can parents help their child at home?
MJ: Parents can speak to the therapist to understand their child's condition better. There is no hard and fast rule as to what parents should do or can do. Rather, it is important as parents to take care of our own mental health, stay calm and happy, and to retain our own identity that gives us our values and meaning in life. We can only take care of our children, if we take care of ourselves.
Q: Any advice for individuals who wants to be an occupational therapist?
MJ: Personally, I think passion and empathy are 2 essential attributes that helps one to continue to improve and do good work as an Occupational Therapist.