What does a Occupational Therapist
actually do all day?
top skill Active Listeningcore tasks 6median pay $100,330AI exposure 1/100
Occupational Therapists is moderately paced, on your feet, people-heavy work.
What this job actually does all day
The representative tasks O*NET analysts recorded for this role — not a glossy job ad, the real work.
- Test and evaluate patients' physical and mental abilities and analyze medical data to determine realistic rehabilitation goals for patients.
- Complete and maintain necessary records.
- Plan, organize, and conduct occupational therapy programs in hospital, institutional, or community settings to help rehabilitate persons with disabilities because of illness, injury or psychological or developmental problems.
- Plan and implement programs and social activities to help patients learn work or school skills and adjust to handicaps.
- Select activities that will help individuals learn work and life-management skills within limits of their mental or physical capabilities.
- Evaluate patients' progress and prepare reports that detail progress.
Skills & environment
Bars are O*NET importance/intensity ratings, scaled 0–100 so you can compare at a glance.
The skills it demands most
What the environment feels like
Deadline pressure: moderateConflict & friction: rarely deals with conflictNeed to be exact: moderateTime spent sitting: mostly on your feet / movingContact with people: constantly dealing with people
Go deeper on this role
How this is built. Tasks, skills, and work-environment ratings come from the
U.S. Department of Labor's O*NET occupational analysis — job analysts survey real workers, so this is the
closest thing to "what the job is actually like" in public data. Skill scores are O*NET Importance
ratings (0–5) and environment measures are Context ratings (0–5), both rescaled to 0–100 here for
easy reading. This task-and-skill detail comes straight from the O*NET database — it's
pulled straight from the survey, not invented. Figures describe the typical role, not any one person's job.
