Occupational therapists help people across the lifespan engage in activities they need and/or want to do. This can include hygiene, cooking, driving, dressing, social skills, work skills, and more. Occupational therapists can work in a wide range of settings, such as hospitals for acute care or inpatient rehabilitation, school systems, home health, skilled nursing facilities, and mental health facilities. Occupational Therapy allows clients to achieve independence and participate in meaningful activities. We consider both the client and their environment to choose an approach. Sometimes, we decide to improve impaired skills. Other times, we teach compensatory strategies and adapt the task to fit the client’s abilities. Many times we use a combination of the two to balance our client’s functional ability with the environment.
The profession of occupational therapy was founded a little over a century ago, with our first national organization being founded in 1917. The University of Florida Occupational Therapy program was accredited starting in 1961. In 2012, an interdisciplinary grant allowed occupational therapy and public health students to conduct a needs assessment, which revealed the need for free occupational therapy services in Alachua County. Our students and faculty got to work, and by 2014 the Occupational Therapy Equal Access Clinic (OT EAC) opened, offering services once a month. Over the next few years, those services grew to twice a month and eventually every week as we now operate. The OT EAC’s vision is to improve the functional participation of clients in everyday life and to reduce healthcare disparities through collaboration with the EAC network and community outreach.
Most of our clients are referred to us within the EAC network from the Medical EAC or the Physical Therapy EAC, but some are self-referrals or referrals from local clinics. Since June of 2020, we have implemented a clinic due to closures from COVID-19. Before the pandemic, we operated above the CVS on SW 13th St. along with the Physical Therapy EAC and will be returning there in July. We plan to make telehealth a permanent fixture of our clinic even after we resume in-person services this summer. With the option to attend telehealth or in-person sessions, we hope to cater to different clients and clinicians’ needs and preferences to be able to extend our services to a greater number of clients in need.
As a free student-run clinic, the Doctor of Occupational Therapy (OTD) students at UF are able to gain clinical experience and apply information they are learning in the classroom to the real world, under supervision of licensed clinicians from the community and faculty members. Clinicians who volunteer with the OT EAC are eligible to apply for CEU’s through the Florida Board of Health under Section 456.013(9), F.S. We are always looking for volunteer clinicians and faculty members and would love to learn from and work with you! If interested in volunteering with the OT EAC, please email us at oteac@chfm.ufl.edu for more information. To learn more about the OT EAC team, click on the "Meet the Team" button at the top of the page!
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