Coaching Skills for Occupational Therapy Practitioners
Occupational therapy practitioners are trained to support meaningful change.
Coaching skills help us do that work with greater collaboration, clarity, and impact.
Health Coach OT is an educational space for OTs and OTAs who want to strengthen their practice by learning how to facilitate change with clients — while staying grounded in OT identity, scope, and ethics.
Whether you’re seeking better client outcomes, more sustainable practice, or a different way of working within occupational therapy, coaching skills offer a practical and ethical path forward.
A step-by-step guide for implementing coaching-based interventions in OT practice
Downloading the framework also enrolls you in ongoing education via the Health Coach OT newsletter.
Supporting change is central to OT — and it requires skill
Much of occupational therapy involves helping people do things differently in their daily lives. That kind of change rarely happens through information or instruction alone.
While OTs are highly trained in activity analysis, adaptation, and intervention planning, many were never explicitly taught how to:
help clients clarify what actually matters to them
navigate uncertainty or mixed motivation around change
partner with clients without carrying the full responsibility for outcomes
pause the impulse to “fix” when collaboration would be more effective
As a result, practitioners often rely on expert-driven approaches — even when they sense that a more collaborative stance would better support follow-through.
Coaching skills give structure and language to this part of the work.
Practicing with both expertise and partnership
A coaching-informed approach allows occupational therapy practitioners to move intentionally between roles.
Sometimes our clinical expertise needs to lead.
Other times, stepping back creates space for clients to take ownership of change.
When OTs put on a coaching hat, they are better able to:
support changes that align with clients’ values and daily realities
share responsibility for the change process
preserve therapeutic relationships
practice in ways that feel more sustainable and professionally satisfying
This is not about doing less as an OT. It is about using expertise more strategically in service of better outcomes.
Grounded in occupational therapy. Clear in scope.
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This work is about:
- Coaching as a clinical skillset
- Ethical, scope-aligned practice
- Evidence-informed behavior change
- Strengthening occupational therapy identity
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This work is not about:
- Leaving occupational therapy
- Becoming a generic life coach
- Fast exits from healthcare
- Sales-driven or hype-based messaging
Where Coaching Skills Belong in OT Practice
Coaching skills can be integrated into traditional OT roles or applied in adjacent and emerging practice areas.
There is no single “right” way to use them.
What matters is having the ability to shift into a coaching stance when the situation calls for it — supporting change while honoring both client autonomy and professional judgment.
How I Support OT Practitioners
Health Coach OT exists to educate, clarify, and normalize coaching as an occupational therapy skillset through:
practical tools designed to support coaching skills in OT practice
For practitioners who want formal training, I teach the Just for OT: Practitioner-to-Coach program in partnership with Aspire OT, a continuing education provider.
Start with the OT Coaching Intervention Framework
A step-by-step guide to understanding and applying coaching-based interventions within occupational therapy practice.