Bariatric Team Advocacy
It is important that Bariatric teams advocate for the inclusion of occupational therapy expertise on their teams to increase awareness of the need and desire for this collaboration.
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Benchmark programs, such as Mayo Clinic, include occupational therapy in their bariatric team (Mayo Clinic, 2019).
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Individuals who undergo bariatric surgery improve some aspects of health, yet continue to face nutritional, occupational, and role challenges postoperatively (Coulman et al., 2017; Mata et al., 2015).
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Maladaptive eating, substance abuse, suicide and self-harm were found at an increased rate for this population following surgery (Kalarchian & Marcus, 2019; Sarwer & Heinberg, 2020).
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These challenges represent required areas to further address as an interdisciplinary team, and patient needs that occupational therapy can address.
Due to these challenges, it is critical that bariatric teams advocate for OT's inclusion in the interdisciplinary team to put patient needs first and enhance patient outcomes.
Advocative Resource
Provided to the right is a downloadable Word Document of a sample job posting template created by the authors that can be used by bariatric teams to utilize for the hiring of an occupational therapist to join their interprofessional bariatric care team.
DISCLAIMER: This is solely a template of information to include in a job description for any current or future bariatric surgery teams that are seeking an occupational therapist for employment. Information provided is rooted from evidence-based research on current and potential future benefits occupational therapists have for serving on bariatric surgery teams. Please understand that information listed below may not be applicable to some healthcare organizations Please use with caution.