Holidays – Spotlight - Occupational Therapy

“It’s important to us to engage patients in therapies that help them work on their goals. We observe that by incorporating the holidays into their treatment plans, patients are more motivated and see their therapy as something meaningful.”

Spending time in a hospital over the holidays can be a lonely experience for many. In an effort to curb the holiday blues, many departments at Joseph Brant Hospital worked towards creating festive cheer to help lift spirits.

One of these teams were the Occupational Therapists (OTs) who incorporated the holidays throughout the year into their patient’s treatment plans. OTs work in many different departments and clinical settings and use therapeutic techniques to improve, rehabilitate, or maintain a patient’s ability to perform everyday activities.

During the winter holidays, OTs incorporated tasks like working with patients to create and decorate ornaments that they later hung on trees, colouring festive pictures to post on the wall and having patients practise their standing and reaching by decorating the windows in their unit.

For Christmas, patients worked towards being able to wrap presents and place them under the tree, create and write Christmas cards, make paper snowflakes and complete Christmas-themed crosswords and puzzles.

“We break down tasks into chunks and build them up as our patient’s progress in function.” 

We asked if there was a memorable story they wanted to share about a patient who spent time with them over the winter holidays.

“We had a stroke patient of German descent who spoke of a German tradition that involved baking a festive German cake. She baked the cake every year and her goal was to be able to bake this cake again for the holidays. We incorporated this functional task into her treatment plan and she was able to make this cake in the OT kitchen!”

Thank you to all our Occupational Therapists at Joseph Brant Hospital for demonstrating our commitment to our patients by delivering compassionate, quality care.