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Touro College
27-33 West 23rd Street
NY, NY 10010
Attn: Dr. Estelle Breines, Occupational Therapy

E-mail:estelleb@tact.touro.edu



          Estelle Breines, PhD, OTR, FAOTA is Professor and Chair, Programs in Occupational Therapy and Occupational Therapy Assistant, and is the Assistant to the Dean of Health Sciences at Touro College in New York City. She has held faculty appointments at New York University, Dominican College in Blauvelt, NY, and Union County College in Union, NJ. She has taught at the Associate, Bachelors, Masters and Doctoral degree levels.

          Dr. Breines has published and lectured widely throughout the United States as well as in many other countries. Dr. Breines' primary research interests are in the history and philosophy of occupational therapy, adult perceptual development, functional assessment and therapeutic occupation.

           For the past several years, Dr. Breines has written a monthly column entitled "Activity Notebook" for Merion Publications' Advance for Occupational Therapists, in which many ideas about activity and their use in therapy have been discussed. A list of these articles as well as Dr. Breines' other publications are available here. In essence, these articles focus on the following ideas: Occupational therapy uses active occupation to heal and teach, using self-directed action in tasks related to work, play, leisure and self care. Unfortunately, many tasks in which OTs engage their patients are viewed widely as mundane, ordinary, simple. In reality, however, they are only simple and ordinary when one is skilled at them. For the people we treat, the ordinary is not simple. Learning even the simplest tasks requires concentration, dexterity and will. Unfortunately, these important qualities are the very ones many of our patients are missing. Becoming skilled at activity, and skilled at its analysis and its therapeutic use, are fundamental for OTs. This web site is designed to provide a forum for occupational therapists and occupational therapy assistants to explore the meaningfulness of active occupations, and their use as therapeutic tools.