I'm given an excellent occupational therapy assessment through the Internet, through the web-based Internet, from Veterans Affairs. The assessment form they provide us is absolutely excellent. It covers all areas of everyday life and is very client centred.
I just want to comment that, specifically on the Veterans Affairs assessment, it asks, what are the veteran's wishes and what is their perception of the problem? That's an excellent question to be on there, because it really allows me to start right from scratch with the veteran.
So I walk in and introduce myself, and they usually see me as a little girl and they have trouble taking me seriously for about 10 minutes. After we get over that, I go through their health concerns. I do a physical assessment, I do a mobility assessment, I do a power mobility assessment if that's what they're looking for, and I do a home safety assessment to decrease falls. Those are the types of self-care stuff that I'm looking at.
Occupational therapists, however, can do more than that. That's a very traditional role, a very prescriptive role, but we can do more than that.
I just received a referral for the first time to do pain management with a gentleman who is a veteran, who I believe is in his early eighties. That is something that not very many occupational therapists and the physician get to do. It's something we are able to do, but typically in the VIP program we don't get the opportunity.
I feel that occupational therapists can be used with veterans, senior veterans, in a leisure mandate as well. A lot of these veterans are restless. They lose their spouse. They're sitting at home. They don't sleep, because their bodies don't move. They don't sleep, because they're worried. They're used to bringing their wife to the hospital all the time and they had this role, but they don't do it anymore. So occupational therapists also look at leisure areas and recreation, and I think that should be expanded upon.
We also look at environmental barriers. A lot of these veterans would love to leave their house. I give them a scooter, power mobility, and they love it. But then they can't get to the Legion, because the Legion doesn't have a ramp that goes up.
Well, the cool thing about occupational therapists is that if we had the boundaries to open it up for us to assess the community where this veteran wants to go, we'd be able to allow them to access these recreation places. Then we can provide our recommendations, give them to Veterans Affairs, and hopefully they can be an advocate for their own people and say, “Hey community, hey MP, this is what we need changed in our community to make it more accessible.”