Occupational Therapist
On this page
- What's it like to be an Occupational Therapist?
- How to become an Occupational Therapist
- Latest Occupational Therapist jobs
- Top skills and experience for Occupational Therapists
- Occupational Therapist role reviews
What's it like to be an Occupational Therapist?
An Occupational Therapist (Kaiwhakaora Ngangahau) provides personal care and guidance to people living with illness, injuries or disabilities. They help people to rehabilitate injuries, assess workplaces for safety, write reports and work with other health professionals including Doctors and Physiotherapists. Occupational Therapists may specialise in working with specific groups, such as people returning to work after injury, children, the elderly or people living with a disability. They work in schools, workplaces, aged care facilities, hospitals and residential homes.
Tasks and duties
- Providing personal care to patients or clients.
- Planning and implementing rehabilitation plans.
- Assessing injured workers to map out a tailored return-to-work plan.
- Visiting workplaces to gain an understanding on what challenges an injured worker may face when trying to get back to work.
- Reviewing high-risk manual tasks at workplaces to determine how they can be performed more safely.
- Running workshops on health and wellbeing topics.
- Consulting with insurers, medical practitioners and employers.
How to become an Occupational Therapist
You need a degree and professional registration to become a registered Occupational Therapist.
Complete an accredited qualification, such as a Bachelor of Occupational Therapy. This usually takes three years of full-time study.
Register with the Occupational Therapy Board of New Zealand to get your Annual Practicing Certificate (APC). Your certificate must be renewed annually.
Consider completing postgraduate study to advance you skills, such as a Master of Occupational Therapy. This usually takes 18 months of full-time study.
