An orthotist is an allied health professional that makes assistive braces
for all over the body for example this could include for the legs for the feet
for the back and also for the neck there's just a larger variety of devices
that we can make to assist patients in everyday life an orthotic technician is
a person that takes a prescription from an from orthotist based on a clinical
assessment and then manufactures that device to meet the prescription and
healthcare requirements of the patient [Music]
day-to-day is an orthotist I tend to see patients that might need custom devices
or prefabricated devices to be fit to them to achieve their goals I'll attend
multidisciplinary meetings and I'll also what's involved in custom workers doing
a lot of tech work like working on the plaster to be able to actually make the
devices for people on a day to day basis and orthotic technician manufactures the
devices these devices can be anything from a helmet to a scoliosis brace to an
ankle foot orthoses on the lower limb we manufacture these devices from
thermoplastics which we vacuum form we use a lot of other materials such as
metal and leather more and more we're manufacturing our devices from
high-performance materials such as carbon fiber carbon fiber is very strong
but extremely light which is a great benefit to our patients so as an orthotist
we work in this department but not solely in this department we work in the
emergency departments as well in theatres in different clinics and on the
wards and our job is to assess patients for orthotic needs make a clinical
judgment and a prescription and actually carry out the fabrication process of the
device that's ultimately going to help them
on a day-to-day basis we'll be seeing a range of patients for example in our
department would be seeing a pediatric population so whether that would be
assessing your patient assessing how they walk and why they walk the way they
do we could be casting them with plaster to take a mold of a certain part of
their body we could also be making the braces for the certain part of their
body so this includes plaster work like the leg in front of me from there we
would mold plastic onto this leg cut it off for the finished product which is
the brace for the leg this helps patients predominantly to be able to
achieve their goals in everyday life so for example if there's a child that's
not functioning well at school are not keeping up with their peers due to their
disability then we might be able to make something or provide them something that
will assist them in achieving this goal and feeling more with part of their
community I like to think that we can add value to the health system by
preventing further hospital stay especially if someone who might be
amputee risk so if we were able to do feel a device a preventative device a
long-term effect might prevent another hospital admission and also in general
we can facilitate quicker discharge and yeah keep him away from the hospital
which is always a good thing so I think our role as orthotist adds value because
we work with a part of a larger team for example a patient might not be out to be
seen by somebody else until we have sorted out any problems with stability
of bones so for example a physio won't be able to get a patient and walk them until
they've been seen by us and so the sooner I see somebody listen they've been seen by
other members of the team and that can help get them out of hospital early and
improve their quality of life and save the system money as well
[Music] some exciting things on the horizon for
our profession includes 3D scanning 3D printing and carving basically 3D
scanning is electronic device that will scan a certain part of the patient's
body then transfer out a computer where you can thread a print from that or also
cover from that from those images we can then make the brace orthotic device this
is a really quick great solution for our profession casting a child can be very
traumatic or even just an adult if you'd quite stressful on the clinicians as
well so this saves a lot of time and a lot of Tears for the patients and it's
also a really cool interactive thing for a child to be looking at is a 3D scan
going onto the computer
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