Era Presentations - A Look Through the Decades and OT

This week we embarked on a journey looking at many different decades beginning with the 1940's and going through the 2010's. There was a group for each decade and each talked about the decade in general and how OT changed during that decade. This post is going to include some of my takeaways from the presentations.

One event that stood out to me came from 1950's. In 1958, the AOTA accredited an educational program for occupational therapy assistants. People who had assisted with therapy before were referred to as OT techs. There was a shortage of OTs in psychiatric settings and they needed more people with training to be able to help this particular population so that was how that OTA position came about. This just makes me think about now how more demanding of job occupational therapy would be if we didn't have the help of OTAs. This was definitely an important change in the therapy world.

An occupation that changed over the decades could be a obvious thing like play that children participate in. In the early decades, play was more about playing a social role, playing outside, and playing simple board games. As time went on technology definitely changed the world of play and turned to more of a path of video games and electronic or handheld games. Something that was interesting to me though was how some of the games that came from the earlier decades you still see today! They are probably revamped some, but still the same game.

What I keep seeing about OT over and over again is how the field just keeps adapting to what is needed to give people the therapy and intervention that they need. The ability and want of OTs to learn and grow always impresses me and I intend to take that into the field with me as well when I begin to practice.

A few points that I just found interesting was first how in the 1943, with the Emergency War Courses, a person could be a OT in 2 weeks. I understand that they were in great need of OTs at that time and didn't have time to wait the usual 18 months that was required to become on OT, but that fact blew me away. Another was that in 50's there was an outbreak of 57,000 cases of polio. I have watched videos of people that had this horrible crippling disease and I didn't realize that the outbreak was that large. Last one was that it wasn't until 1975 when the Education for All Handicapped Children Act came into effect that public schools could not turn away children that had handicaps from getting an education. The 70's do seem like a long time ago for me, but I also think about that my parents were alive then and how different of a world it was back then. I'm thankful for the changes that have been made in our society and for hopefully more positive ones to come.