Opportunities for Occupational Therapits in New Zealand

New Zealand has a world renowned education system producing highly qualified medical professionals. However, with the change in the local and global macro-economic factors, along with rapidly changing age profile of the country, the role of occupational therapists has become increasingly important in the future. Also, occupational therapist salary in New Zealand range from $32,000 to $75,000 per annum. Its quite a huge range covering fresh graduates to highly experienced therapists. However, Occupational Therapist salary has been growing slowly over the last few years with a median pay of $55,000 per annum.

Occupational Therapy Board of New Zealand (OTBNZ) reported in 2004 that there were approximately 1800 occupational therapist professionals holding annual practising certificates. This is therapist mainly dominated by female workers. This was evident in New Zealand Statistics as well with 89% of them female and 15.1% of OTs work less than 80 hours per month.

Because of their important role, OTs form a core part of the medical system of every country. Henceforth, there has been an annual average growth of more than 4% in New Zealand between 1991 and 2001. This consistent increase in demand for OTs can be attributed due to the following factors: increased money allocated to mental health sector by the central government in the budget, and also an increase in the ageing population leading to increased deman of rehabilitative health services.

Considering the historical factors are still very much into play, they will keep driving the demand for Occupational Therapists in foreseeable future as well. In addition to that, the new zealand federal government has added even more money into its health services policies which will lead to even more deman for occupational therapists. Some of these strategies are:

1. Increased Focus on Individuals suffering from disability to help them to fully integrate them within the wider society.

2. The New Zealand health of older people strategy: emphasizing coordinated, responsive, and preventative health and disability support for older individuals.

3. The Primary health care strategy: emphasizing renewed focus on providing top quality primary health care service to New Zealand residents.

Furthermore, future prospects of this profession look good as the baby boomer generation retire, a period when the incidence of heart attack and stroke increases. This will result in a significant deman for even more occupational therapists. However, one can only hope that the occupational therapist salary would also grow simultaneously with increased work load on the profession.

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