Occupational Therapy in Intensive Care

Abstract

This review is a synthesis of the literature on occupational therapy interventions in intensive care. Each year, millions of people discharged from intensive care units face newly acquired cognitive impairment and/or functional disability. Occupational therapy includes studies on daily living activities such as feeding, dressing, early mobilization, ambulation, and cognitive processes such as memory, attention, problem solving, and advanced executive functions such as performing multistep tasks. Increasing arousal and awareness, optimizing alertness, and participation in early mobility activities to elicit a purposeful behavior are the goals of occupational therapy interventions in intensive care. In the literature, it is seen that occupational therapy interventions performed to achieve these goals show significant results. However, studies on this subject, which include that occupational therapists have shown intense activities in the recent past, are insufficient. Future research is needed to clarify the specific interventions and role of occupational therapists in the intensive care unit and the effectiveness of these interventions. The occupational therapy and occupational therapist occupation operate in the intensive care units, which is newly developing in Turkey, is also a new situation in the world. This study is the first review written in our country on this subject.

Keywords

• intensive care
• neurology
• cognitive
• neonatal
• occupational therapy