OT and the Niche of Driving Rehabilitation

Our goal as occupational therapy practitioners is to return a client back to functioning in their valued occupations and this includes driving. It is well within our scope of OT and as an OT generalist to address driving, community access and transportation needs. As a driving rehabilitation specialist (DRS) and/or certified driving rehabilitation specialist (CDRS), you would be able to take this process a step further with advanced training to assist clients with returning to driving with or without adaptations as well as transitioning to driving retirement, when driving skills are becoming diminished. As a CDRS, we complete comprehensive evaluations on skills that are needed for vehicle operations on the roadways. This may include vision, strength, coordination, cognition, and reaction time. We follow the comprehensive evaluation with an in-car evaluation of these skills and if needed, training with adaptations that may assist a person to operate a vehicle safely such as transitioning a patient to operation of a vehicle using hand controls only. I always like to say, “my goal for my clients is to keep you driving as long as possible and as long as it is safe to do so.”