OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29824, 17 May 1962, Page 21

OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY

“N.Z. Struggling To Catch Up”

While other countries had been forging ahead in the field of occupational therapy, New Zealand had been struggling to catch up, said the principal of the Occupational Therapy Training School in Auckland (Miss F. M. Rutherford) yesterday. Miss Rutherford was speaking at the biennial conference of the New Zealand Registered Occupational Therapists’ Association ait present being held in Christchurch.

In the struggle to catch up with world standards, occupational therapists in New Zealand had lost sight of the goals and been involved in various aspects of the subject rather than embracing it as a whole, said Miss Rutherford.

Whenever there was progress one must be prepared to face change and opposition. Learning was a continuous process. Miss Rutherford said that basic principles of treatment did not change very much, though methods and media did.

The teaching of applied occupational therapy, particularly in the physical field, was not backed up with good clinical practice. All of what the students were taught was not carried out in practice. “Three years seems a long time to spend training a therapist when most of what she is taught at the school is not utilised in the hospitals,” said Miss Rutherford.

If young therapists were not given the opportunity to put their ideas into practice they would go elsewhere to find more favourable working situations.

The new order of functional, purposeful occupational therapy would require endless perseverance, sustained interest, and devotion to ideas if the medical profession was to be convinced pf its value.