Healthcare · Helping & Teaching
Occupational therapist: what the job actually is
Helping people do the everyday things that matter to them, from dressing and cooking to returning to work, after illness, injury or disability.
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The work
What this job actually is
- Working with people whose illness, injury, disability or age makes ordinary life difficult, and finding practical ways to get them doing what matters to them again. Occupation here means any activity that fills a life, not only a job.
- It can mean adapting a kitchen, finding a different way to button a shirt, planning a return to work, or helping a child take part in school.
- The work starts with listening to what the person wants to be able to do, then assessing what is in the way, which can be the body, the home, the task or the people around them.
- OTs work in hospitals, rehabilitation centres, clinics, schools, community and home care. Job Bank lists hospitals and occupational therapy clinics as main employers.
- In Ontario you register with the College of Occupational Therapists of Ontario (COTO), and registration requires a national exam.
A Tuesday
What a normal day looks like
Not a good day or a bad one. The ordinary version, which is what you would actually be living.
- 8:00 — Read the referrals and notes for the day. Each is a person with a goal.
- 8:30 — A home visit. You look at the stairs, the bathroom, the kitchen and how the person actually moves around them.
- 10:00 — Discuss options with the client and family. There is rarely a perfect solution, just trade-offs.
- 11:30 — Back at base, you write the assessment and order equipment, then phone a funder.
- 12:30 — Lunch, with a colleague, talking over a difficult case.
- 13:30 — A session with a patient recovering from a stroke, practising getting dressed or making a hot drink. Small tasks, real stakes.
- 15:00 — A team meeting with the doctor, nurse and physiotherapist about discharge. You argue for the plan that you think the person actually wants.
- 16:00 — A call with a family who are worried about whether someone can safely go home.
- 17:00 — Notes and referrals, written with care because other professionals rely on them.
- 17:30 — Home. It is a job that makes you look at every staircase differently.
Honestly
Who loves this, and who should not do it
The second list is the useful one. Nearly every careers page leaves it out, which is why nearly every careers page reads like an advert.
- You are practical and creative about solving real-life problems for particular people.
- You like listening and working out what matters to someone before offering a solution.
- You enjoy teamwork with other health professionals.
- You can be patient with slow progress and honest about what is not going to change.
- You are interested in the link between health, daily life and the places people live and work.
- You want to be sure what you do is understood. Many people do not know what an occupational therapist does, and you spend time explaining.
- You dislike long routes. Entry is at university level, with competitive admission and years of study before you register.
- Student debt concerns you. The route is long and not cheap.
- Emotional work drains you. You work with people facing serious illness, loss of independence and difficult family decisions.
- You dislike paperwork and funding battles. Equipment and services often depend on funders and waiting lists.
- You want fast, visible results. Progress can be slow, and sometimes the goal is helping someone cope with decline.
The route in
How you actually get there in Ontario
Plan a university degree that meets the prerequisites
COTO says Canadian-educated applicants need proof of graduation from an approved Canadian university programme. Programmes set their own entry requirements, so check the admission pages of the schools you are interested in, because the requirements and application service details change.Graduate from an approved programme
Once you have graduated, you ask your university to send your final transcript and any required affidavits directly to COTO. Only graduates of approved programmes are eligible.Pass the national certification exam
COTO requires applicants to pass the National Occupational Therapy Certification Examination, administered by the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists.Meet COTO's other requirements and register
COTO lists professional liability insurance with a sexual abuse therapy and counselling fund endorsement, a suitability assessment including a vulnerable sector check, language fluency and proof you can work in Canada. You cannot practise until COTO gives you written confirmation and a registration number.
Where this comes from: COTO — Registration for Canadian-educated applicants · Job Bank — Occupational therapists (NOC 31203), Ontario wages
The money
What it pays in Ontario
Job Bank's own figures, quoted rather than summarised, with the period they describe — so you can tell how old they are and go and check them.
- $33.33
- Low (hourly)
- $45.00
- Median (hourly)
- $55.90
- High (hourly)
Ontario, NOC 31203. Reference period 2023-2024, last updated by Job Bank on 19 November 2025. Wages vary a lot by region inside Ontario and by how long you have been doing it — the low figure is roughly where you start, not what the job is worth.
Where it is heading
The outlook for the next three years
Job Bank publishes a three-year outlook for every job in every province. It is the closest thing to an honest forecast, and it moves, so read it as a weather report rather than a verdict.
Good4 out of 5 stars
- Employment growth will lead to several new positions.
- Not many positions will become available due to retirements.
- There are a small number of unemployed workers with recent experience in this occupation.
What that rating means: how many openings Job Bank expects in Ontario for this kind of work against how many people are likely to be looking — not whether it is a good job. A “limited” rating means more competition for each opening; it does not close the door, and it can change before you are ready to walk through it.
What is changing in this work
- Keeping the aging population in their place of choice is generating demand for occupational therapy services
- Focus on self-management of chronic conditions
- Efforts to reduce opioid misuse by supporting alternative approaches to managing acute or chronic pain
Who hires for it
- Hospitals
- Occupational therapy clinics and offices
- 7,350
- people work in this job in Ontario
- 91%
- are women (48% across all jobs)
- 19%
- are self-employed (15% across all jobs)
Source: Job Bank — Occupational therapists job prospects in Ontario (NOC 31203). Outlook updated by Job Bank on 10 December 2025; read by us on 5 October 2026.
Before you leave school
Things you can do now
- Take senior biology, English and a social science such as psychology if it is offered. The route is a degree first, then a professional programme.
- Volunteer where you will see people with a disability or recovering from illness, such as a rehabilitation hospital volunteer programme, a seniors' home or an accessible recreation programme.
- Look at the admission pages of Ontario OT programmes now so you know what comes before them.
- Ask a local OT, through a hospital or clinic, whether they would answer two questions by email.
Test it
Do this before you decide anything
Reading about a job tells you almost nothing. This is designed to be done alone, this week, for free.
Look at your own home as an obstacle course
About 45 minutes- Walk through your own home as if you could not use one arm, or had to sit down while doing everything. Do not do anything unsafe or involving stairs while impaired; only imagine it.
- Write down five everyday tasks, such as getting into the bathroom, making breakfast or carrying a bag, and for each one write one change that would make it easier.
- Notice whether working out these problems felt like a puzzle you enjoyed.
- Read the COTO page for Canadian-educated applicants and write down the steps after graduating.
What it tells you. If you enjoyed finding small, practical fixes and thinking about how a person's life actually works, that is how occupational therapy thinks, and it is worth looking further. If it felt trivial, or you wanted something more medical or more physical, there are other healthcare careers that may suit you better.
Better than any article
Questions for somebody who does this job
Most people say yes to a teenager who asks good questions. These are the ones that get real answers rather than encouragement.
- “What do you spend most of your time doing?”
- “What is the hardest part of the job emotionally?”
- “How do you explain your job to people?”
- “What is working in a hospital like compared with the community?”
- “What would you tell a student about getting into a programme?”
- “How do you deal with funding limits and waiting lists?”
Could you own one of these?
The part other career sites never mention
Yes, in some settings. Job Bank's workforce data shows a share of occupational therapists are self-employed, often providing private assessments and consulting. It involves insurance, referrals and billing, and the regulator's rules apply, so many OTs start in a hospital or community role first.
Not sure this is the right list to be reading
Start from yourself, not from the job.
Future Finder is free, takes about ten minutes, needs no account and stores nothing. It will tell you which kinds of work you lean toward, and which of these pages are worth your time.
Parent of a teenager weighing this up? Career coaching for teens gets them talking to people who do the work, anywhere in Ontario.
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Wages and training requirements change. Every figure on this page is linked to the body that publishes it, and the review date above says when we last checked. If you find something out of date, tell us and we will fix it.