Peggy Said:

Occupational Therapy or Diagnostic Radiography degree?

We Answered:

I would say you have a better chance at Occupational Therapy.
However, I'm not sure. The best advice I can give you is to look at some university websites at those degrees and see what qualifications they ask for. Failing that, just send a few universities an email and ask them! That's what I did.
I'm applying to do Speech and Language Therapy (which is in the same field as Occupational Therapy) and I find that universities care more about how passionate you are, how much experience you've got and how well suited you are than actual grades that you've got.

Mike Said:

i am going to do a degree course but i don't no if to do occupational therapy or physiotherapy please help me

We Answered:

I definitely suggest you do more research as they are two completely different professions! Yes OTs do sometimes work in physical settings alongside physios but they take a very different view of the patient and have different therapeutic goals. I think to understand how different they are you need to look into how occupational therapists work in mental health settings.

The underlying theory behind OT is that engaging in 'occupation' (eg everyday activities like shopping, housework, hobbies, work) makes us who we are. Eg, think of the hobbies, studying that you currently do, if you did none of those things and just sat around all day you wouldn't feel like yourself would you?. OT is about rehabilitating people back into doing the things they love, the things that make them feel useful, building up their confidence, concentration, social skills. You know how time goes slow when you have nothing to do, well OT is about engaging people in activities so they lose sense of time, spending it in a meaningful way (the old "time flies when you're having fun"). The variety of jobs you could apply for as an OT are very broad too as the skills are very transferrable. Eg, working with homeless people getting them back into employment.

Have a look at this online book about OT and mental health.

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&…

Yes physical OTs will also need a basic understanding of muscles and movement too, and would use this knowledge to physically rehabilitate somebody using activiites, but they look at stuff beyond this too as above. But a physiotherapist is primarily concerned with understanding how the body works, muscles, tendons, bones, nerves. They will mainly treat clients by doing exercises with them, massage, So do you want to learn about human anatomy, do you like learning facts (like muscles and bones) or do you want more variety? To do an OT degree you need to be able to cope with ambiguity.

For instance my OT course doesn't have much taught anatomy at all. Good luck choosing and hope this helps, obviously this is from an OT point of view and I don't know loads about physio.