COPD? Is it like LAPD?

Well, no. It's not some police department like LAPD. COPD stands for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, an obstructive lung disease that over time makes it hard to breathe. It involves inflammation and thickening of the airways, and the destruction of the tissue of the lung where oxygen is exchanged.

This is a short video by Health Guru explaining the mechanics of COPD:

So as an occupational therapist, I'm here to talk about the effects of COPD on an individual - from the lens of an occupational therapists. Basically, occupational therapists focus on the client's ability to engage in occupation, which is defined as purposeful and meaningful activities, as opposed to the layman occupation which means your job title or what you work as. People with COPD will have many problems in their occupations, or rather, as I like to put it (so that non-OTs would understand) - daily living activities*. So what daily living activities do people with COPD face? I'll continue with that on my next post. Stay tuned.

*To occupational therapists, daily living activities, or rather activities of daily living (ADL), is often defined as self care activities like bathing, dressing, feeding etc, and is not associated to hobbies, or what you do at work, or other things you do in life. However, traditionally, ADLs were called BADLs (Basic Activities of Daily Living), therefore the daily living activities or activities of daily living in this blog should not be mistaken for the OT term BADL. When I communicate with other healthcare professionals (usually doctors and specialists), I would always use daily living activities or ADL to describe occupation, as not to confuse them. This is also because they can't seem to grasp the concept of occupation as OTs, do. I do not blame them though - just yesterday I was involved in a discussion in my department about work rehab, where a few OTs defined the term work as OT's definition of occupation, arguing that work rehabilitation also involves to unpaid work (like housewives) or leisure activities, when work rehabilitation program is actually a structured program for employed people on MC to return back to work. This is due to a English to Malay translation problem in the early days, where occupational therapy was called Pemulihan Pekerjaan (Job/Work Rehabilitiation).