Occupational Therapists in Bucharest

Someone asked for my help in finding occupational therapists in Bucharest who speak English and can work with someone in Toronto online.

Varianta în limba română pe FaṭăCarte Meta Zamolxis.

• What are Occupational Therapists (O/T) and what do they do?
• What is the (O/T) situation in Romania and particularly in Bucharest?

I started, as always, with a spreadsheet. I will continue to update it after having published this article.

In Canada, Occupational Therapists (O/T) typically have a Masters degree and work with people who have disabilities or suffered some kind of impairing trauma to help them recover.

We have a full English Wikipedia article on Occupational Therapy, but the closest I can find on the Romanian Wikipedia is “Fizica Medicala” or “Medical Physics” and even this lone article “has problems”. Luckily, a pharmacy chain comes with what seems a lot like a translation of an English article (drm-ceot). I’ve also found Aspera’s blurb on O/T for kids (asp-copii) but my contact needs it for an adult.

I also found the site of an international organization with what looks like a Romanian chapter (wfot-ro). This one suggests that the chapter was an associate 2012-2018 and full member since 2018, with President Marinela Rata working from Bacau and Mirela – Carmen Burllau in Oradea. The association has a Gmail address (tocupationala), Facebook page (fb-toc), a website (tocupr), a mailing address in Oradea and lists 130 OTs. It states that OTs are not required to register with the professional association and graduation from a WFOT approved programme is not required either, but that a bachelor degree is required. Additionally, OT Assistants do not exist in Romania and

The problem is not the number of OT's, but the working opportunities. Occupational therapists do not work yet in the hospital, so we are struggling with the recognition of the profession.

There’s also a definition, dated April 2017:

Occupational therapy is a client-centred health profession concerned with promoting health and wellbeing through occupation. The primary goal of occupational therapy is to enable people to participate in the activities of everyday life. Occupational therapists achieve this outcome by working with people and communities to enhance their ability to engage in the occupations they want to, need to, or are expected to do, or by modifying the occupation or the environment to better support their occupational engagement.

For WFOT approved programs, only the University of Bacau is listed with a Bachelor of 3 years and “approval ongoing”.

The Romanian chapter website (tocupr) lists only Ms Burllau in Oradea and two more therapists in Alba-Iulia. There are quite a few other informational pages, one sending to the European “council” of the profession, COTEC, seemingly located in Germany.

So, it seems that OT is somewhere between psychology/psychiatry and physiotherapy, in that it has a more holistic approach to recovery, dealing with both the physical and the psychological aspect. It is unlikely that I will be able to find a “pure OT” specialist but rather a multidisciplinary team able to communicate online in English with my Canadian contact.

Sources / More info: drm-ceot, asp-copii, wfot-ro, fb-toc, tocupr, cotec

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