OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY IN WATER

Discipline 

The World Federation of Occupational Therapists (WFOT), considers Occupational Therapy as a health profession that deals with the promotion of Health and Wellbeing through occupation. The main goal of occupational therapy is to train people to participate in activities of daily living. Therapists achieve this result by enabling individuals to perform those tasks that will optimize their ability to participate, or by modifying the environment so that it reinforces participation. 

What do you do and for what? 

Occupational Therapy in the care offered to students, favoring the development of their autonomy and doing it in the Aquatic Therapy Unit will enhance the effectiveness of the treatment, due to the enrichment of this environment, since, on the one hand, the properties Water mechanics combined with specific treatment interventions (activity, used as a means or an end, Halliwich Concept and Watsu Therapy) facilitate the achievement of the proposed therapeutic objectives and, on the other hand, having changing rooms provides the ideal space for carrying out of the basic activities of daily life (shower, hair drying …) that, if they did not have this environment, would not be able to train in a real way, also favoring the generalization of learning to the rest of the environments in which students operate. 

Main goal 

The main objective of occupational therapy is to stimulate the sensorimotor and cognitive components necessary to promote independence and autonomy in activities of daily living. 

Benefits 

The benefits that occupational therapy in the water can provide are focused on improvements at the social, psychological, cognitive, sensory and emotional level and at the level of motor skills and all of them will impact on the performance areas of ADL, which is in the one we are focusing the most on working on. 

 Transdisciplinary Methodology 

The transdisciplinary methodology applied in our Program is based on three key points: Joint assessment, launching of common objectives from the four disciplines and development of common sessions. 

We work with four professionals, physiotherapy, therapeutic pedagogy, speech therapy and occupational therapy and the students attend the therapy sessions in the water in one of these four disciplines, we put into practice a transdisciplinary methodology, by which the four disciplines, and the fields that each one of them encompasses, they end up merging, leading to a global approach.  

Likewise, in this methodology there is a feedback / coordination that includes families, teachers, the water therapy unit and the rest of the Poseidon Team professionals (assistants).  

 Conclusions 

The general conclusions of the work carried out in the Poseidon Program and that can be obtained from all the aforementioned are the following:  

Transdisciplinary intervention in the aquatic environment enriches other therapies. 

Alternative medium to conventional learning. 

Water: facilitating and motivating medium. 

Improves deficit components.