Example Career: Recreational Therapists
Career Description
Plan, direct or coordinate medically-approved recreation programs for patients in hospitals, nursing homes or other institutions. Activities include sports, trips, dramatics, social activities and arts and crafts. May assess a patient's condition and recommend appropriate recreational activity.
What Job Titles Recreational Therapists Might Have
- Rehabilitation Therapist
- Activities Director
- Activity Assistant
- Activity Coordinator
- Activity Director
- Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialist (CTRS)
- General Activities Therapist
- Recreation Therapist
- Recreational Therapist
- Therapeutic Recreation Specialist
What Recreational Therapists Do
- Obtain information from medical records, medical staff, family members and the patients themselves to assess patients' capabilities, needs and interests.
- Conduct therapy sessions to improve patients' mental and physical well-being.
- Plan, organize, direct, and participate in treatment programs and activities to facilitate patients' rehabilitation, help them integrate into the community, and prevent further medical problems.
- Observe, analyze, and record patients' participation, reactions, and progress during treatment sessions, modifying treatment programs as needed.
- Confer with members of treatment team to plan and evaluate therapy programs.
- Instruct patient in activities and techniques, such as sports, dance, music, art, or relaxation techniques, designed to meet their specific physical or psychological needs.
- Develop treatment plan to meet needs of patient, based on needs assessment, patient interests, and objectives of therapy.
- Encourage clients with special needs and circumstances to acquire new skills and get involved in health-promoting leisure activities, such as sports, games, arts and crafts, and gardening.
- Prepare and submit reports and charts to treatment team to reflect patients' reactions and evidence of progress or regression.
- Counsel and encourage patients to develop leisure activities.
- Develop discharge plans for patients.
What Recreational Therapists Should Be Good At
- Oral Comprehension - The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
- Oral Expression - The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
- Problem Sensitivity - The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing there is a problem.
- Deductive Reasoning - The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
- Inductive Reasoning - The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
- Speech Clarity - The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
- Speech Recognition - The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
- Written Comprehension - The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
- Written Expression - The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
- Information Ordering - The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
- Near Vision - The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
- Originality - The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.
- Fluency of Ideas - The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
- Category Flexibility - The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
- Flexibility of Closure - The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material.
What Recreational Therapists Should Be Interested In
- Artistic - Artistic occupations frequently involve working with forms, designs and patterns. They often require self-expression and the work can be done without following a clear set of rules.
- Social - Social occupations frequently involve working with, communicating with, and teaching people. These occupations often involve helping or providing service to others.
What Recreational Therapists Need to Learn
- Psychology - Knowledge of human behavior and performance; individual differences in ability, personality, and interests; learning and motivation; psychological research methods; and the assessment and treatment of behavioral and affective disorders.
- Therapy and Counseling - Knowledge of principles, methods, and procedures for diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of physical and mental dysfunctions, and for career counseling and guidance.
- Customer and Personal Service - Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services. This includes customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.
- English Language - Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition, and grammar.
- Education and Training - Knowledge of principles and methods for curriculum and training design, teaching and instruction for individuals and groups, and the measurement of training effects.
- Sociology and Anthropology - Knowledge of group behavior and dynamics, societal trends and influences, human migrations, ethnicity, cultures and their history and origins.
- Administration and Management - Knowledge of business and management principles involved in strategic planning, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership technique, production methods, and coordination of people and resources.
- Clerical - Knowledge of administrative and clerical procedures and systems such as word processing, managing files and records, stenography and transcription, designing forms, and other office procedures and terminology.
- Medicine and Dentistry - Knowledge of the information and techniques needed to diagnose and treat human injuries, diseases, and deformities. This includes symptoms, treatment alternatives, drug properties and interactions, and preventive health-care measures.
This page includes information from O*NET OnLine by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license.