 What's up you guys and welcome back to another Who Wants to Be. So in this Who Wants to Be we are going to be talking about occupational therapists and that profession. So if you are interested in becoming an occupational therapist this video is for you. In this video we are going to go over all of the usual questions which are what are occupational therapists, what do they do, how do you become an occupational therapist, how long does it take to become an occupational therapist and how much do they make. So let's get into the video right now. What's up you guys, sit down and welcome back to my channel. So as usual this is another Who Wants to Be and we're going to be hitting those five top questions and if you guys have any other questions for me on each of these professions I will always leave a link to their respective professional website and you can always ask me questions in the comment section below. So what are occupational therapists? Occupational therapists are part of the allied health community. Now these particular healthcare professionals assist patients and help them build or restore their ability to perform their daily activities. Now I know that sounds pretty familiar because it kind of sounds like physical therapists and what physical therapists do but we are going to be getting into the next section which talks about what occupational therapists do and I will break that down so that you can see the little differences in the nuances between physical therapists and occupational therapists. So like I said before physical therapy and occupational therapy it kind of sounds very similar and that's because they work in tandem like in my hospital the physical therapists and the occupational therapists kind of share a space, they work together because they are about helping our patients get back to an assemblance of who they used to be. Now in physical therapy if you remember from my physical therapy video and if you have not seen that video on who wants to be a physical therapist the link is right here make sure you go check that out but physical therapists are called movement specialists while on the other hand occupational therapists help with not only assisting our patients with movement but assisting them with getting back to their daily or their activities of daily living as we call it in healthcare. So what does that exactly mean? If you have a child with a you know developmental disability or you have an older person that is now having like cognitive delays or decline because of dementia or Alzheimer's or you have one of our patients that come in as a trauma and have a particular bone that's broken beat in their upper extremity left or right, occupational therapists work with our patients to help them be able to manage their activities of daily living. So if you broke your right arm and you're like okay I'm right handed how am I going to write or eat or bathe myself because I'm right hand dominant then the occupational therapists will give you various different activities and therapies to use to be able to actually learn how to put your hand through your shirt or in your shirt over your head when you have an arm that is essentially a little bit out of capacity. They help the students that are in school function socially and academically like learning how to do different tips and tricks to help those students that may have developmental disabilities thrive in school. So their job is actually pretty important because they work over various different areas be it acute care like inpatient hospital outpatient in the school setting or in a skilled nursing facility. So how do you become an occupational therapist? So to become an occupational therapist you first have to gain an undergraduate bachelor's degree. Now there are going to be various different prerequisites requirements as with any school that has like a graduate program they're going to have to be prerequisite requirements that you're going to have to go through but you can find out all of those various different prerequisites requirements by simply going to the occupational therapy application site it will have a list of all of their participating programs and then you can just click on those different programs put them into google search and see what their prerequisite requirements are. So I'm going to leave that for you here on the screen and then also in the description box. You can also go to the occupational therapy associations website to find out more information about the various different paths that you can take to become an occupational therapist but after you complete your bachelor's degree and the prerequisite requirements to actually apply to this graduate program you will then decide if you want to do a master's in occupational therapy or a doctorate in occupational therapy. Now the doctorate in occupational therapy is their terminal degree so a lot of there are a lot of schools that are popping up with if you've already had your master's in occupational therapy you can then go to this particular program to get your doctorate because that is where the profession is heading. So if you do want to be doctor such and such this is a path that you can take you can get your doctorate in occupational therapy and then after you've gotten your doctorate or you've completed your schooling you would also need to ensure that you have gotten your fieldwork done and for like the profession of becoming like a physical therapist or PA that fieldwork is rotations that is our second year of schooling and as as much of the same with occupational therapy you would have to go work with other occupational therapists that are licensed and practicing so that you can hone the skills that you've been learning while attending your program. After you've completed that fieldwork you would then need to become certified and take the board exam and then you would be eligible to gain your license in whatever particular state you live in. So how long does all of this schooling take and so I mean it's I don't think it takes that long but I think if you are looking at it from start to finish then it can take it in somebody's mind it can take very long but essentially you would have to complete four years of your undergraduate degree and then either two or three years of your postgraduate degree. There are obviously you can always continue your medical education and do more learning but the typical standard is seven years I would say of school work but if you already have a bachelor's degree you've already gotten that out of the way then it would only be two to three years which is a typical master's or doctor degree. The final question that everybody's been waiting for how much do they make so for 2022 the US news always comes out with their you know top 100 or so jobs in the nation and the occupational therapist profession has actually been ranked number 11. They on average make a little bit more than $86,000 a year so that number specifically if you want to know is 86,280 which is actually pretty good obviously this is a median so there are people that make less and people that make more it all depends on what you're like where you're working who you're working for all of those different things going to you need to be taken into consideration but I think 86,000 dollars is a decent amount of money it can be two people's salaries and I think that's really a good outlook especially with the way that our economy is going right now because if y'all didn't know we're in a recession all right so hopefully you like this video if you want to see another who wants to be in a particular profession please let me know in the comment section below I'm thinking of either doing a certified nurse anesthetist or maybe a respiratory therapist so tell me which one you want to see first all right if you haven't already done some like this video subscribe to my channel follow me on instagram and on the pa and on instagram at get that c university where we help you not only get into but through pa school thank you guys so much for watching I will talk to you guys next time