Finding an Occupational Therapist You may want to obtain the services of an occupational therapist (or O.T., as they are often called) for a variety of reasons. Perhaps you need to evaluate the ergonomics of a particular workstation, obtain a functional assessment, or perhaps you need a workplace reintegration plan. One of the most common ways to fnd an occupational therapist is by word of mouth. See if one of your friends or co-workers has experience with one of the local O.T.'s. If they have had a good experience with an occupational therapist, perhaps they are the right person to help you. Checking to see if the therapist is registered with the provincial College of Occupational Therapists (sometimes the College is combined for Physiotherapists and Occupational Therapists) is important for a couple of reasons. First, it will tell you that the O.T. has met generally accepted standards of training in the field. Second, it means that the therapist has not had serious complaints against them that would cause their registration to be withdrawn. Membership in the College allows an individual to call themselves an occupational therapist, and also requires that the person adhere to a code of ethics. Occupational therapists have varying levels of experience, but a more experienced therapist is not necessarily better, as it depends on what types of problems they are used to dealing with. If you can find out whether people who refer to and have experience with more than one occupational therapist refer to particular O.T.'s, that is likely your best measure of effectiveness. Some family physicians have experience with more than one occupational therapist, and they can be a good information source. If insurance case managers refer to a particular person, this can be a good indication that the therapist has been effective with a variety of clients. You can obtain this information for free on the zappointments.com website. When you look for a listing of local occupational therapists, click on the "number booked" link. This will tell you how many and what types of referrals an occupational therapist has had in the past. Finding an occupational therapist is easy, but finding the right one for you is more difficult. You can find a local occupational therapist quickly by looking under your province and city on zappointments.com, but be sure to look at the "info about" link to see what the person says about her- or himself on their website, as well as looking at the "number booked" link to see what types of referrals they have had in the past. Practitioners who have had a large number of referrals through lawyers, insurance, police, military, or government agencies are probably doing a good job for these referring agencies. Finally, you can contact the occupational therapist by telephone or secure messaging system on zappointments.com. You can register for free on the website and them use the secure messaging system. If you do not register, the occupational therapist will not be able to reply using the system. Do not use email, as it is not secure and the therapist is not likely able to reply using email without violating confidentiality rules. Clients and Third Parties: Please feel free to contact zappointments.com to inquire about Occupational Therapy Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine Counselling Physiotherapy Chiropractic Treatment Naturopathic treatment Medicolegal (IME) assessments Psychovocational assessments Rehabilitation programs

Marketing your occupational therapy practice Having trouble marketing your occupational therapy practice? First, try making contacts with family physicians. This is the first and best source of referrals for many occupational therapists. Likewise, other professionals can be sources of clients. Psychologists, physiotherapists, acupuncturists, dentists, lawyers, and multidisciplinary clinics can all be sources of referrals. Leave some printed information with these people. Your business card or brochure should indicate very clearly the areas of practice and ways to contact you. Telephone is the simplest way for people to contact you, although you may not have staff to answer the telephone and may have to return calls between clients. You should definitely discourage people from using email, as this is not secure and you could be violating ethical principles by using this method. Many practitioners are not aware that email is not private, and should probably be left off your business cards so that you do not violate ethical standards. Internet chat has similar problems. You can use a secure messaging service such as that available through the zappointments.com online appointment scheduling system. Also, the zappointments.com system allows clients and third party payors such as insurance case managers to schedule appointments with you immediately, which can make the difference between getting the referral and having the client delay and possibly forget about occupational therapy. You probably have thought about using the Internet to market your services, and since you are looking at this site, you are certainly aware of the power and reach of the web. Getting a website is an inexpensive way to market your services. If you are a zappointments.com subscriber, you can build a simple web page in minutes for free on the system. Zappointments.com will design more elaborate sitesw for a nominal charge. No matter where you get your website, it should contain all of the important contact information that you have on your brochures and business cards. Leave your email address off the website, though, otherwise you will be encouraging people to communicate using an insecure channel. Also, spammers use automatic programs to gather your email from websites and send you unwanted email.

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