Occupational Therapy Practitioners:
Your Clients Know What to Do.
They're Just Not Doing It.
You give solid recommendations. Good education. Evidence-based interventions. Your clients nod, agree, and come back next session completely unchanged. The problem isn't your clients. And it's not your recommendations.
It's that telling people what to do—even when you're right—doesn't create change.
Coaching does.
Get the OT Coaching Guide
What OT School Didn't Teach You
OT school taught you adaptive equipment, activity analysis, and therapeutic interventions. All valuable. All necessary.
But no one taught you how to help clients actually follow through. How to work with someone who "knows" they should eat better, move more, manage stress, or check their blood sugar—but isn't doing any of it.
So you default to what you were taught: educate and advise.
"Let’s focus on making healthy food choices."
"Do this home exercise program twice a day.”
“You need to better manage your stress”
Then you document “refused,” “declined,” or “failed” when nothing changes.
Here's the truth: Prescriptive advice rarely works. Coaching conversations do.
What Changes When You Learn to Coach
When occupational therapy practitioners learn coaching skills—how to have conversations that lead to action, how to help clients find their own motivation, how to guide real change instead of prescribing solutions—everything shifts.
Your clients stop feeling lectured and start feeling heard.
They discover their own reasons for change instead of trying to follow your prescription.
They actually do things—because the changes are theirs, not yours.
And you? You finally have tools that work for the nutrition, stress, sleep, and movement piece that's driving your clients' conditions. You feel more confident. More effective. And you open up career options you might not even know exist yet.
This is what Health Coach OT teaches.
Use These Skills in Practice Now. Expand Your Career Later.
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Integrate into your current practice
Address the lifestyle factors impacting clients’ conditions with approaches that work.
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Add specialized services
Offer wellness programs, group coaching, or niche services within your current role.
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Transition to health coaching
Build a private practice, work in corporate wellness, or create a full coaching career.
I’m an occupational therapist, scientist, and board-certified health coach.
Hi, I’m Jaclyn
Early in my OT career, I kept hitting the same wall: clients who knew what they should do but weren't doing it. I'd give great education, clear recommendations, evidence-based advice.
Nothing changed.
I thought it was them. Turns out, it was my approach.
When I learned coaching skills—motivational interviewing, how to facilitate (not force) change, how to work with resistance instead of against it—everything shifted. Clients engaged differently. Outcomes improved. And I finally felt equipped to help with what was actually driving their conditions.
I created Health Coach OT to give occupational therapy practitioners the coaching education we didn't get in school—grounded in research, appropriate for our scope, and designed for how we actually work with clients.
Three Ways to Learn This Approach
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Start with the podcast:
The Health Coach OT features practical episodes on coaching skills and interviews with OT practitioners using these approaches in real practice.
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Join the email list
Get insights on shifting from prescriptive advice to coaching conversations, plus updates on training opportunities.
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Ready to transform your practice?
The OT Practitioner to Coach (P2C) certification program launches Spring 2025—30 courses over 75 hours teaching you comprehensive coaching skills designed specifically for occupational therapy practitioners.