She is currently the Spinal Cord Injury System of Care Team Leader. She facilitates programming for individuals with Spinal Cord Injuries across the continuum and ensures that their needs are met from a therapy perspective. Theresa is very active in community organizations and is a strong advocate for community reentry, as well as adapted sports. Occupational therapy is a health and rehabilitation profession designed to help people regain and build skills that are important for health, well being, security, and happiness. Occupational therapists work with people of all ages who, because of physical, developmental, social, or emotional deficits, need specialized assistance in learning skills to enable them to lead independent, productive, and satisfying lives.
Most people tend to be familiar with the role physical therapy plays in the rehabilitation process.
People seem to be less aware of the important role of occupational therapy in this process. A source of people's confusion may be that the two professions are not clearly differentiated and while there are significant differences, they are not easy to describe. Perhaps the best way to explain the differences between physical and occupational therapy is to offer an example of our approaches in the rehabilitation process. Should an individual have a traumatic event, which has left them immobile, and were they fortunate enough to be able to work on the skills of walking, a physical therapist would focus on the process of getting them to walk. An occupational therapist would enter this process and would take it one step further.