emma taylor
Hi! I am Emma. ​​​My clinical areas include physical injuries such as trauma, spinal injury and amputations, equipment and adaptations, older people, manual handling and vocational rehabilitation/occupational health. I can also assess for appropriate adapted vehicles and support with return to driving following injury. I am based in Sheffield and will normally travel up to two hours but for one off or infrequent visits I am happy to travel further. I can be contacted directly by case managers as well as clients and their families. I also provide training and offer professional supervision to other occupational therapists. More about me...​​
contact
email: emma@taylorergonomics.com
phone: 07901 987616​
my OT story
I qualified in 1994 with a BSc in Occupational Therapy. I worked in statutory services (community and hospital settings) for 10 years, where I specialised in equipment and adaptations services, becoming a head OT in this area. I then moved into higher education where I taught occupational therapy students at Sheffield Hallam University for a number of years and was the programme lead for their MSc. in Vocational Rehabilitation, before transitioning into independent practice.
I have an MSc in Health Ergonomics, which my background in home adaptations led me to complete. Ergonomics is about getting the best fit between everything we come into contact with as humans, so that our lives can be made easier. This led me down various different paths. One being an increased understanding of the emotional relationship with our home environment and why aesthetics is so important when considering adaptations and design. The other path was vocational and really got me thinking about the relationship between us and our work environments. This has led to a more eclectic career being able to continue with my interest in housing and adaptations from a more holistic perspective but also developing a new passion for vocational rehabilitation.
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Over the 13 years I have worked as an independent practitioner I have built up skills and experience in areas such as spinal injury, amputee, trauma and orthopaedics, brain injury and adults with cerebral palsy, and older people. This in turn has increased my knowledge of associated physical requirements for these client groups such as wheelchairs and seating, manual handling, driving adaptations, specialist vehicles, and accessible holidays. Although not always the case, the nature of my work often doesn't require the intensity that the work of my brain injury or paediatric colleagues does. Therefore I carry a broader and eclectic caseload. Working in higher education has really helped be consistently apply theoretical concepts to my practice, and as such my approach has always been to assess the barriers to occupational engagement, be those with the person, their environments, the occupations (activities) themselves, or more often that not, a combination of all three. That then will influence the approaches I take which could be looking at adapting the ways an activity is carried out, provision of equipment or adaptations to compensate for the impairment, or look to restore previous function as much as is possible through a graded intervention programme.
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Alongside my clinical work I continue to teach and support occupational therapy students on an ad hoc basis, as well as providing external training on various topics. I am a manual handling trainer and so can provide risk assessments and training for staff teams. I also run a company Healthy Work Solutions that specialises in occupational health services and vocational rehabilitation.
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I am HCPC registered, a member of RCOT and also a member of the Vocational Rehabilitation Association. I have full liability insurance and an enhanced DBS.