The Use of Occupation-Based Interventions in Hand Therapy

Certified hand therapists (CHTs) provide therapeutic rehabilitative services after injury or illness of the upper extremity (Colaianni, & Provident, 2010). The approaches to interventions that CHTs utilize differ from those more typically used by occupational therapists (OTs) because the approaches to interventions are often primarily based in the medical model of physical disabilities (Robinson, Brown, & O’Brien, 2016). There is growing concern that OTs in hand rehabilitation are not using occupations as a method to intervention, leading the occupational therapy profession away from its foundational tenets (Grice, 2015). Furthermore, according to Colaianni, Provident, Lessa, and Wheeler (2015), there is a certain level of tension present amongst occupational therapy practitioners regarding the use of biomechanical approaches, rather than occupation-based approaches, especially in the hand therapy setting. A review of current research on this topic may provide insight into the effectiveness and potential benefits of implementing the use of occupation-based interventions compared to biomechanically based interventions, in a hand therapy setting