President of the BOPTA, Melanie Buge as she spoke with media.

President of the BOPTA, Melanie Buge as she spoke with media.

More therapists needed

There is a need for more occupational therapists (OTs) to be in the public and private system.

Speaking to The Barbados Advocate on the sidelines of the 14th Biennial conference of the Association of Caribbean Occupational Therapists, President of the Barbados Occupational Therapy Association, Melanie Buge stressed that there was a need for more OTs in the medical system.

“Just to put things into perspective, I am the only OT working on the short rehabilitation unit and I am contracted to work for 12 hours per week to service the inpatients at the QEH,” she said.

She highlighted that sometimes it was “physically impossible” for her to service so many patients alone, as she also assesses every patient that comes in to the ward, as well as pay home visits.

“There are no OTs in schools either, all of my colleagues that practice in paediatrics practice privately and if the family does not have the resources to get to these therapists then children are lost in the system,” she said.

“In places such as the US and Canada there is at least one OT in every school because our job is to promote function.”

She explained that OT was a dynamic profession that focused on improving function in all activities in daily living and this was something that not many persons understood.

Buge highlighted that raising awareness was one of the things the Association hoped to do with this year’s conference.

“The purpose of this is to bring us together as an OT family, regionally and internationally and use this opportunity to collaborate, share our resources and improve ourselves as practitioners because we are such a small number in this country and the region,” she said.

“Conferences like this really show the magnitude of what we are able to achieve as a group and shows the medical field the need to have more of us in the system in terms of what we can offer, improving patient outcomes, improving people’s quality of life essentially.”

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