Occupational Therapy in Wrocław, Poland

Introduction

Hello everyone,

My name is Martyna Gwiazda and I am a third year Occupational Therapy student (OT) in Wrocław, Poland. Being this month’s guest blogger gave me the chance to share a little bit of an insight about OT in Poland. I will be describing the reality of our profession in my country, both advantages and disadvantages included! 🙂

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The evolution of OT in Poland

The first steps of OT in Poland

Occupational therapy is only being applied in Poland since the second half of the last century. At first occupational therapists worked on patients guided by not necessarily OT related methods. Some of them were art-therapeutic methods such as painting, drawing, sculpturing, needlework and paperwork. In most places there had been a total lack of OT related methods and in some others, besides the ones mentioned above, music-therapy and dance-therapy were also used to treat patients.

Latest improvements

With the passage of time more recent methods are being used in practice. Cooking, economical training and work training are some of them! Thankfully, some facilities have adopted a more clinical-like context and the number of these facilities is growing over time.

Occupational therapists nowadays can work in:

• retirement homes
• hospitals
• occupational therapy’s workshop ( warsztat terapii zajęciowej)
• special schools
• daily care services for mental illness
• rehabilitation centers 
• services for disabled children and adults

As long as education is concerned, tutors have been teaching the Canadian model of OT mostly at the Academies of Physical Education in Wroclaw, Krakow, Warsaw, Poznan. There are the schools, in Poland, trained by ENOTHE. The other schools teaching about OT usually use other methods and offer vocational studies
(student there are still taught the profession but the
schools do not require a-levels for entry). The elder
generation of occupational therapists in Poland
have completed the vocational studies.

DISCLAIMER

Hi everyone, it’s Emmanouela, I have decided to start writing a disclaimer for the ownership of the photos provided just to be safe due to copyright issues.

I, therefore, do not own any of the photos provided in this blog.

You can find them by clicking on these links:

FLAG: https://kafkadesk.org/2018/09/20/where-does-the-polish-flag-come-from/

PICTURE OF OT’S: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_therapy