Knowledge
Occupational therapy explained
Plainly written texts on the questions we are asked most often at our practice in Thalwil. Every article says at the foot what it is based on and when it was last reviewed.
30 articles. These texts do not replace an assessment: your doctor makes the diagnosis, never the therapy.
Hand, arm and orthopaedics
Injuries, operations and wear in the hand and arm: what is normal, what is too early, and when an assessment is worth it.
A weak grip: when glasses slip out of your hand
First it is the glass while drying up, then the jam jar. Failing hand strength has very different causes, and the most important fork in the road is whether a muscle has visibly become thinner with it.
15 minutes to readRead
After hand surgery: how hand therapy continues
A hand operation is the beginning of the treatment, not its end. What happens in the first days and weeks after surgery shapes the months that follow. This text describes the medically usual course of the rehabilitation and gives you a sense of what each measure is for.
14 minutes to readRead
Broken wrist: the first weeks after the cast
The cast is off and the hand does not obey. It is swollen and stiff, and the fingers will not close into a fist. After a broken wrist, medically a distal radius fracture, that is the rule and not a sign that something has gone wrong.
14 minutes to readRead
Carpal tunnel syndrome: what occupational therapy does before and after surgery
The hand falls asleep at night, and shaking it out helps. At some point it stops helping. What lies behind it, what helps without surgery, and what has to happen in the weeks afterwards.
10 minutes to readRead
CRPS: the illness nobody gets explained to them
A few weeks after the fracture it should be getting better. Instead the pain grows, the hand is thick and shiny, now hot and red, now cold and bluish, and even a sleeve hurts. There is a name for this: CRPS, formerly Sudeck’s dystrophy.
15 minutes to readRead
Dupuytren’s contracture: what really helps before and after a procedure
At first it is a hard nodule in the palm. After a while the finger no longer straightens and catches on things. In between lies a time in which a great deal is claimed and little is proven.
13 minutes to readRead
Fine motor skills: buttons, handwriting, zips
After a cast, an operation on the hand or a stroke, the problem is often not strength but accuracy. The button slips away, and your own signature looks like someone else’s. Fine motor skills can be rebuilt, but only with many repetitions of real actions.
17 minutes to readRead
Finger and thumb osteoarthritis: joint protection in everyday life
A jar will not open, and wringing out a cloth hurts. Osteoarthritis in the fingers and the thumb shows up first where a lot of force meets a small joint surface. A good deal of that work can be done another way.
13 minutes to readRead
Hand splint: wearing it, caring for it, living with it
You come home with a splint, and on the second evening the questions arrive that did not come up in the appointment. Is this pressure still normal? May it go in the shower? The answers are here.
15 minutes to readRead
Mouse arm in the home office: setting the workplace up
It starts with a pulling feeling in the forearm late in the afternoon. A few weeks later the neck already hurts in the morning, and the mouse hand feels heavy. Almost everyone then looks first for the right chair. The chair is part of the answer, but the smaller part.
16 minutes to readRead
Scars on the hand: what keeps them supple
After a cut or an operation on the hand a scar remains. It looks finished after a few weeks and is not: under the surface the tissue keeps rebuilding for months. Some of that can be influenced, but less than many guides promise.
15 minutes to readRead
Tendon injury of the hand: why the first weeks decide
A cut or torn tendon in the hand does not heal by feel but by the calendar. In the first weeks the repair is weaker than it was on the day of the operation, and at the same time a tendon that lies still sticks down. The aftercare runs between those two dangers.
15 minutes to readRead
Tennis elbow: why resting is rarely enough
The pain sits on the outside of the elbow, and it comes when you grip. A cup or a cloth is enough for it. Most people affected have never played tennis, and nearly all hear the same advice first: rest it, and perhaps wear an elbow strap. That alone does not help the attachment of the muscle in the long run.
15 minutes to readRead
The hand falls asleep: what lies behind it
You wake in the night, the hand is furry and does not obey properly. You shake it, and after a few minutes it passes. There are several causes for this feeling, and they differ less in how strongly it tingles than in which fingers are affected.
15 minutes to readRead
Trigger finger: what helps besides an injection and surgery
The finger catches as you bend it, then snaps through with a jolt. Mornings are the worst, and sometimes it stays locked and has to be straightened with the other hand. Between waiting and surgery lies more than usually gets discussed.
14 minutes to readRead
Neurology
After a stroke, with Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis or a brain injury: how everyday life works again.
After a stroke: using the hand again
After a stroke, movement control often returns in the leg, the shoulder and the elbow before it returns in the hand. The hand keeps you waiting longest, and it is the part you need for almost everything. This text explains why that is and what helps at home.
16 minutes to readRead
Cognitive training: memory, concentration, planning
After a stroke, a brain haemorrhage or an accident with a head injury, something often remains that nobody can see. Concentration does not hold out, and a piece of work that was begun gets stuck halfway. This text explains what is practised against that and what such practice demonstrably achieves.
17 minutes to readRead
Hemiplegia in everyday life: dressing, eating, washing
Hemiplegia does not change one movement, it changes all of them. Dressing, breakfast, showering, getting up from the bed: every one of these is built for two hands. Much of it can be done independently again with a changed order and a few adaptations. This text shows the ways that have proved themselves, as a collection of possibilities rather than a set of rules.
16 minutes to readRead
MS and fatigue: dividing the day so that strength is left
The day starts empty already. Not tired after a short night, but empty as after a march that nobody saw. This text explains what fatigue in multiple sclerosis is and how a day can be divided so that something is left by the evening.
17 minutes to readRead
Parkinson’s in everyday life: small handwriting, stiff hands
It shows up first when signing something: the letters grow narrower towards the end of the line. Later, doing up buttons takes longer, and in a doorway the feet suddenly stick to the floor. This text explains where that comes from and which everyday handling makes a difference.
18 minutes to readRead
Growing older at home
Safety in your own home, assistive devices, dementia, and the questions relatives ask themselves.
Adapting a home for later life: what works without building
Most homes are built for a life in which you get up quickly and have both hands free. When a restriction comes along, many people think first of building work, although the greater part of the effect arises before the first drilled hole, through rearranging, light and a few fitted aids.
17 minutes to readRead
Assistive devices in daily life: what really helps
A device does not help because it is well meant, but because it sits in the right place and because somebody has shown how to use it. Experience suggests that a considerable share of the devices handed out are no longer used after some months, because people lean too heavily on the object they were given and their own initiative falls away. This text says which ones bring most in daily life, what matters when they are introduced, and who pays for them in Switzerland.
17 minutes to readRead
Dementia at home: shaping the day so that it works
Most people with dementia live at home, and almost always somebody in the family looks after them. What carries the day is not exercises but a day that repeats itself, and a home that says of its own accord where things are. Occupational therapy does not halt the course of the illness; it works on what succeeds today.
17 minutes to readRead
Fall prevention: five things you can change today
Most falls in later life do not happen on ice but on level ground in your own home. Five places are involved almost every time, and all five can be dealt with in an afternoon, without building work.
16 minutes to readRead
When parents no longer manage on their own: how you notice
It rarely begins with an event. It begins with small things that take more and more effort: the paperwork that piles up, or the cooking that has become tiring. This text says which abilities can decline in which order, what is worth having assessed and how to talk about it without taking over.
17 minutes to readRead
Prescription, costs and process
How occupational therapy is prescribed and billed in Switzerland, what treatment at home requires, and what happens at the first appointment.
Driving after an injury or a stroke: who decides
After an operation on the hand or after a stroke the question comes quickly: may I drive again, and if so, when? There is no number of weeks for it. This text explains who decides in Switzerland and what the assessment turns on.
15 minutes to readRead
Occupational therapy at home: when a home visit is possible
Some people can no longer manage the way to the practice. For others the problem lies where they live anyway: at the bath, or in their own kitchen. For both cases there is treatment at home, the home visit of occupational therapy on medical prescription.
15 minutes to readRead
Occupational therapy on prescription: procedure, cost, waiting
You are holding a prescription for occupational therapy and do not know what follows from it. Who may write one, how many sessions it contains and who pays in the end is usually not printed on the form. It is set out here.
15 minutes to readRead
Occupational therapy or physiotherapy: what each one can do
One word stands on the prescription, and you do not know why it is that one. Physiotherapy and occupational therapy are two separate professions with their own degree course and their own therapeutic approach. This text shows which question each of them asks, and how to tell which one fits your concern.
15 minutes to readRead
Return to work after illness: step by step back
After months away the first working day stands in the calendar, and with it the question of how much of it can be managed. This text describes how a return in stages runs in Switzerland, who is involved, and what it most often fails on.
17 minutes to readRead