So many times over my career I’ve heard cliche’s and platitudes used by therapists and often wondered….do they know what that actually means? Recently I’ve had a number of discussions on this podcast about terms used that are used incorrectly OR used as lip service and I thought it was about time I did an episode and explored some of these.
Terms explored in this episode include:
Holistic
Woo Woo
Function
Serving
and more….
Tune in to hear my reflections from my brain and a dictionary.
I’d love to hear from you. Drop me an email or a DM on socials and talk to me about how I can give you even more value. If you know other OTs who would also get value from Occupied or Occupied plus then let them know and send them to occupiedpodcast.com. I can’t wait to see you next episode.
Look after yourself, look after others and always keep Occupied
Brock
@brockcookOT
brock.cook@me.com
www.occupiedpodcast.com
Transcription
Brock Cook 0:00
A quick message to let you know that occupied plus has launched over on Patreon. If you are looking for some extra value from occupied extra podcast episodes, downloadable resources, access to me supervision, mentorship, and many, many, many, many more things that I will be continually trying to add more and more to than jump over to patreon.com forward slash occupied plus, and check us out tiers starting from $4 us a month, it is bargain basement for extra value that can add to your clinical practice. Now let’s check out this episode. I’ve been meaning to record an episode like this for some time. And I finally got around to putting it together and bringing this to you. There are quite a few things that ot say on the daily that I see very regularly on social media, in ot related groups, etc. that I don’t feel like OTS fully understand what they’re actually implying when they use certain terms and certain words. So I was actually have a look at the definition of some of the things that we say and see whether or not it actually matches up with what we are intending it to say. Get a My name is Brock Cook and welcome to occupied. In this podcast. We’re aiming to put the occupation in occupational therapy, we explore the people, topics, theories and underpinnings that make this profession so incredible. If you’re new here, you can find all of our previous episodes and resources that occupied podcast.com. But for now, let’s roll the episode. All right, so firstly, I want to lay out there that this is absolutely in no way intended as an attack on anyone or anything like that. This is simply me looking at patents that I see within promotional material things that people put out there with regards to the profession, how we work, what we do with people, etc. That has never fully sat right with me because I just had this sort of gut feeling that some of it didn’t make a lot of sense based on my understanding of the definitions of these words. I know often the the the term semantics is often thrown around for Potato Potato. Why does it matter? But semantics matters, semantics is the use of linguistics, the study of language and what words actually mean. So it’s kind of important, especially from a profession that is continually complaining that the one word that we use to define our our profession is used or known for a different definition by the general public. I don’t think we can have our cake and eat it too in this instance. So I just wanted to have a look at some of these words. If you’ve got other ones, let me know. And I can do a follow up and we can explore other words, but these are a few that. Some of them I’ve spoken about before some of them I have never mentioned. But let’s have a roll, let’s have a look and see what we can find. So the first one is one that I’ve explored many times on the podcast, but I would be remiss if I left it out, and that is function. So actually having a look at definitions of functions, it’s looking at effect is related to or dependent on other factors. Now when I explained my aversion to using the term within our profession, I use the example of mathematics as does this Deaf dictionary definition as well, where it explains that this factor dependent on other factors is for example, the price is a function of supply and demand. That’s some basic mathematical formula that you can use to work that kind of stuff out. But when you input some set of numbers at the end, you’re going to get exactly the same
format the exact same function out the other end of it because it’s consistent, and people are not consistent. People do not conform to if I input the same data into one situation in a person, I’m not always going to get exactly the same outcome. So that’s my aversion to function. There are certain professions that use that term quite successfully. For me Apple, if you’re looking at sort of manual muscle testing and that sort of stuff, if you put a certain charge through a muscle, you’re going to get a certain reaction, there are parts of the body that do behave in a functional manner. But the person as a whole, yes, there is some predictability but not completely to the point where you could say, Yeah, they’re they work functionally. In that instance, and we have other words, we have occupation, as a lot of therapists have an aversion to using the term, I’ve explained quite a few times how you can explain it, that just makes sense to people. But we have terms that we can use that one better explain what we actually do. But to also better encapsulate the breadth of service that we actually can provide. The next one that I want to have a look at. And I know that some of these words are going to get some people’s backs up. But what I would encourage you to do is if you do have an aversion when I bring up a word or a term, have a think have a reflect, because why you’re reacting to something is also a very important thing to reflect on. So the next one I want to bring up is holistic. For a long time, I’ve often been of the ilk that we’re not holistic, OTS are not holistic, there are very few professions, if any profession that actually are holistic. When we look at the definition of the term, from a philosophical point of view, it’s the theory that whole entities as fundamental components of reality have an existence other than as the mere sum of their parts. So you know, that you will have heard that in textbooks that people are more than the sum of their parts, that kind of thing. There is more to a person, then just the different systems within the body, you know, we have our limbic system and our gastritis, and all those sorts of things. And we put those all together, and that is a person. No, there’s a lot more to it. And yes, if you’re looking purely at that, you could probably maybe justify ot as holistic. When we look at medicine, like a medical definition. It’s looking at the care of the entire patient in all aspects of wellbeing, including physical, psychological, and social. And I believe that if you take those last three areas out of context of the whole definition, then yeah, OTS, right, we look at those things, as a profession, as an individual therapist, you should be at least see during those things. But we don’t care for the entire patient, based on all three of those things at the same time. Ideal? Well, yeah, it would be amazing if we can. But in reality, as a profession, there are probably enough people working in enough different areas that we could call IoT, as a profession, holistic
as a health service, I would hope that a really well designed Health Service has enough different professions, looking at all of the different aspects that make up a person’s health and well being that the health service could be deemed as holistic. Now, I know there’s a lot of issues with different health services. So I’m not going to say that health services are but in the ideal world, you would hope that a well designed well resourced health service could follow fall into that classification. And individual therapists, I think you would really struggle. I know for one, me as a, an OT work who worked in mental health, yeah, psychological social, all over that. All over that the physical stuff, I can make recommendations, there are a lot of physical aspects of ot I have absolutely no idea about and I would not look at, I might get someone else to do it. But again, that’s because the health service I was working within was holistic, not me as a as an occupational therapist. And I believe that the I guess morphing of this term, is where we’re getting slightly stuck with our use of it. So yes, we do look at the person as a whole but we don’t provide care for that person as a whole. We can’t, we can’t we just don’t have have the resources, I don’t know if one any one person has even the brain capacity for the amount of knowledge that would be required to do that. But the term in more recent years has almost been hijacked and sort of modified in this term holistic health. And what Holistic Health tends to look at is those professions that aren’t generally you identified during general health discussions. So you’re gonna have things like counseling, art therapy, being a youth worker, kinesiologist hypnotherapist, a lot of Eastern style, alternative and air quotes, alternative medicine type professions, tend to come under the moniker of holistic health. Now, that’s n