Activities Of Daily Living

Activities of daily living is a term used by healthcare professionals to describe the self-care, leisure and productive activities an individual completes on a day to day basis. This can include community living skills such as budgeting, domestic and personal care activities, leisure activities and involvement in work or volunteer activities. Our Occupational Therapists will take a look at the activities which an individual is finding challenging and find alternative ways of completing these activities. Our Occupational Therapistsaid individuals in developing and maintaining a satisfying routine of meaningful and purposeful activities, through improving their overall functioning.

Components of Activities of daily living

Our Occupational Therapists can help with restoring function and independence, maintaining abilities and promote health and safety, to enable individuals to reach their maximum potential. Common areas of activities of daily living include:

Self-care
Productivity
Leisure

Self-care

Individuals who are considered to have an activity of daily living limitation can find it extremely difficult to complete self-care activities on a daily basis, such as dressing, washing and feeding. This can have a major impact on an individual's self-esteem and emotional well-being and create personal barriers when socialising.

Self-care activities include:

Washing
Bathing
Toileting
Putting on clothes
Feeding
Sleeping

Our Occupational Therapists can create individualised/tailored treatment programmes to help an individual carry out their daily tasks much more effectively and with more confidence.Treatments for individuals with an activity of daily limitation can also include both small and large adaptations to the home environment, dressing, washing and feeding aids and fatigue management techniques.

Productivity

Productivity refers to making a contribution to society through paid or unpaid work. Difficulties carrying out productive activities can impact immensely on an individual's quality of life. Productive activities include:

Volunteering
Paid jobs
House keeping
Preparing meals

Our Occupational Therapists can complete a wide variety of assessments aiding an individual's return to work. Our Occupational Therapy can consist of making small or large adaptations to the workplaceenvironment, providing equipment, grading roles and responsibilities and providing organisational techniques.All of which aim to improve an individual's ability to participate independently in a productive task.

Leisure

Leisure simply refers to the activities an individual enjoys doing. For those with an activity of daily living limitation, leisure activities can become absent in their day to day life. This can have a major impact on an individual's overall health and well-being, effecting both their physical and mental state. Leisure activities include:

Socialising
Games
Sports
Hobbies

Our Occupational Therapists canhelp all individual's access and use mainstream leisure activities. Taking part in leisure activities can prevent an individual's from feeling isolated and improve their quality of life overall. Our Occupational Therapists will discuss what goals an individual would like to achieve and break them down into more manageable tasks, aiding an individual's participation in pleasurable activities.

Occupational Therapy Assessments for activities of daily living

Assessments allow our Occupational Therapists to holistically identify what is limiting an individual's independence. Following an initial assessment our Occupational Therapists will work together with the individual and design a treatment programme the individual feels will meet their needs.

Our Occupational Therapy assessments cover all areas of self-care, productivity and leisure and will analyse how an individual's limitation impacts on their everyday life. Our assessments are carried out by a fully trained and experienced therapists and are conducted for a number of reasons, some of which are listed below:

To observe individuals completing everyday tasks
To prioritise in order of importance individuals concerns
To analyse activities
To develop individualised treatment plan to meet needs

Our assessments are very flexible and can be carried out on a one to one basis, in the individual's own home or here in one of our clinics. Our Occupational Therapists will often suggest the best place to conduct the assessment in order for the best result to be obtained.

Suitable assessment for activities of daily living:

Our Occupational Therapy programmes have many benefits to individuals with activity of daily living limitations. Improving the functional performance of basic activities of daily living is of high importance to all our therapists.

Occupational Therapy Treatment for activities of daily living

Our Occupational Therapists can promote the health and well-being of all individuals with activity of daily living limitations. Through utilising a number of treatments ranging from educating individuals to adapting their home environment our Occupational Therapists can help regain or improve an individual's level of independence. Treatments can be completed on a one to one basis in the comforted of the individuals own home or here in one of our clinics.

Suitable treatment for people with title include:

Advice and education
Aids and adaptations
Fatigue management
Pain management
Memory improvement strategies
One on one Treatment
Home visits

Advice and education

Our Occupational Therapists utilise their skills and knowledge to provide effective advice and education on how best to manage a disabling conditions. Our Occupational Therapists will often guide individuals in grading activities. Grading activities of daily living simply involves breaking down an activity in to is smaller components, making it a much more manageable task to complete

Aids and adaptations

Our Occupational Therapists provide aids and adaptions to improve an individual's ability to participation in daily living activities. For example, if an individual is presenting with difficulties completing as task such as dressing, it maybe that their fine motor skills are weak or untrained. Our Occupational Therapist can reduce these troubles through the use of dressing aids such as, button, sock or shoe aid.

Fatigue management

Fatigue management is extremely difficult. Our Occupational Therapists are highly experience in providing effective treatments to manage fatigue successfully. For example an individual struggling to get by on a day to day basis due to their extreme tiredness, may benefit from completing a fatigue diary. It is through doing this whereby the individual is able to keep track of their fatigue in relation to time of the day it is and what activities they complete. As a result individuals are able to manage their fatigue much more successfully and increase their level of involvement in day to day activities.

Pain management

Activity of daily living limitations may come down to ongoing pain. This can be very challenging to manage and limit an individual's involvement in everyday activities. Our Occupational Therapists can offer techniques in the form of breathing, counting and positive imagery, which enable individuals to manage their pain more positively. As result of managing pain more effectively, individuals become more and more independent in their activities of daily living.

Memory improvement strategies

Memory strategies are helpful to individual who experience organisational difficulties. Our Occupational Therapists can teach individual's compensatory ways of improving their memory, enabling them to manage their day to day activities much more effectively. This may be done through providing individuals with memory difficulties with visual prompts such as diaries or list.

One to One treatments

One to one treatments with one of our Occupational Therapists offers individuals the opportunity to communicate openly, expressing the worries and concerns in confidence. Additionally this allows our Occupational Therapists to gain a more in depth understanding of the difficulties an individual is experiencing and why. This then allows therapy sessions to be better tailored to the needs of the individual and increase their overall independence completing activities of daily living.

Home visits

Home visits allow our Occupational Therapists to assess an individual's home environment and analyse accurately where adaptations can be made. Home visits are complete by our Occupational therapists to enhance an individual's independence in the home environment and when completing activities of daily living such as washing, dressing , cooking and cleaning. Individuals with activity of daily living limitations can benefit greatly from one of our home assessments.

All our treatment programmes are carried out by one of our fully trained and experienced Occupational Therapists and can be complete here in one of our clinics or in the individuals own home.

Conditions commonly associated with activities of daily living limitations

Activities of daily living limitations can impact immensely on an individual's day to day well-being and can often be as a result of underlying medical condition or illness. Our Occupational Therapists trained in assessing and treating individuals with:

Our Occupational Therapists have the skills and knowledge to support and advise individuals with activity of daily living limitations, in order to enhance their participation levels and increase their quality of life overall.

Summary

Our Occupational Therapy programmes make individuals stronger in their environment and when completinga meaningful activity. Utilising specific activities and environmental adaptations our Occupational Therapists can increase an individual functional abilities, social participation and their life satisfaction overall.

What to do next:

Our Occupational Therapist will provide effective assessments and ongoing treatments for individuals experiencing limitation in their activities of daily living. If you feel you would benefit from one of our Occupational Therapyassessments then please feel free email us with any enquires at office@londonot.co.uk or call us on 02033 937 332

Activities Of Daily Living