What is the Salary Range?

Occupational Therapy Assistant Salary

If you like dealing with people and you’re interested in making a great salary, you may find that you’re perfect for an occupational therapy assistant job. The occupational therapy assistant salary is very good compared to other occupations at the same level.
You will have to go through the proper schooling and follow the right channels, but eventually you’ll be helping people like you’ve always wanted to while making a great occupational therapy assistant salary in the process.

What is an Occupational Therapy Assistant?

Occupational therapy assistants are responsible for taking their clients through certain activities and exercises that are designed by an occupational therapist. They are responsible for rehabilitation, and basically ensuring that their patients get back on their feet again after a surgery or an injury.

What is the Salary Range?

If you are an occupational therapy assistant and you’re just out of school, you could stand to make $40,000 or more. Of course, the more education and experience you have, the higher your salary will grow. However, that salary is high compared to other occupations just graduating. That means you’ve made a very good career choice if you chose to become an occupational therapy assistant.

What Type of Education Do You Need?

To become an occupational therapy assistant, you will need to have at least an associate degree or a certificate from an accredited community college. After receiving your degree, you will usually be given a national certification exam.  You must have your diploma and you must pass this exam if you hope to work with patients. Once you’ve got both completed, however, you’ll be closer to making that great salary than ever before.

What Can Occupational Therapy Assistants Expect?

Occupational therapy assistants will help their clients with rehabilitation activities and exercises that come from a certain recovery plan that is made by the head occupational therapist. In addition, the occupational therapy assistant will monitor the patients’ activities to make sure every single one is performed exactly as instructed. The OTA will also record the client’s progress in a report that will go to the head occupational therapist and then the OTA will help the patient get dressed.

When OTAs begin their day, they usually prepare materials and assemble equipment that’s going to be used during the treatment program. They will also typically handle clerical work like setting appointments, answering the phones and restocking and ordering the supplies. Finally, OTAs may also fill out insurance forms or other paperwork as needed.

Is Being an Occupational Therapy Assistant for You?

When you work as an OTA, you have the opportunity to work in a number of different environments. You can work in hospitals, in an occupational therapist’s office, in a residential care facility, as well as with family services and government agencies to name a few.

Depending on where you work, you’ll be getting used to teaching injured patients how to stretch and strengthen the various muscles in their bodies, you’ll work with developmentally disabled patients in order to instruct them with skills that can help them function correctly in society, and you’ll be supervising patients to make sure they’re following the plan set by the occupational therapist. Finally, you’ll log everything so that the occupational therapist can gauge whether or not the current plan is working.

A Very Important Job

You now see why OTAs are so valuable, and why they make the kind of salary that they do. If you want to work as an occupational therapy assistant, make sure you work towards your proper education and study hard for that exam. Once you have those completed, you can start your search at any or all of the places previously mentioned that hire OTAs.

Then not only will you be making a great occupational therapy assistant salary, but you’ll get to go home every evening with the feeling that you made a difference in someone’s life. In fact, when you become an OTA, and you work for some time, your salary will improve but you’ll also have the chance to affect hundreds and even thousands of patients throughout your career, thus improving their quality of life. That right there makes becoming an OTA worth it.

To find occupational therapy assistant jobs in your area, look online or contact an agency that specializes in placing medical staff. You never know when that perfect job will reveal itself so that you can enter one of the most rewarding, and lucrative, career choices out there.