Occupational Therapy

Occupational Therapy.

OT Students-PTC

Occupation...When most hear this word, they instantly think it has some sort of financial meaning behind it or job involvement, right? Well, in this case the meaning of occupation includes a set of skills pertaining to a specific role in someone's life. This case being an Occupational Therapist. Occupational Therapy is a special type of assistance designed to help others with a particular diagnosis, regain and build skills that are important for their health, well-being, and independence. To the left, you can see there is a photo that was taken with a variety of students during their clinicals. One of those students that has recently graduated from the program as an Occupational Therapist in the class of 2013 is my sister, Tracey Edwards (First female in the black shirt starting the O). Tracey has shown me not only the  requirements for this program, but also the process and what type of different settings, experiences, and most of all the variety of people and their diagnostics she deals with. What I am learning from Tracey is that you have to adapt to change at any moment and maintain patience while treating the patient, or this job isn't for you.

Like many others, Tracey had struggled her first few years of college determining what she wanted to pursue as her life's career. She went from physical therapy, to physicians assistant, back to physical therapy, to radiography, to finally settling upon Occupational Therapy. Occupational Therapy interests my sister in a number of ways. One, being that it requires only an associate's degree, although she's achieved her Bachelor's degree in Health Sciences, while also loving the emotionally rewarding feeling she receives from helping the patient regain their strength and move toward getting back to their independent life. My sister is not one for the satisfaction out of money in a career, but    when looking into this salary, it was particularly decent. Depending on the level of education of course. When watching her deal with the patient's in different settings, I've noticed she prefers the PEDS setting more than the others. Every time she attends to the child, she lights up like dog and a new bone. The patient's seem to respond just as well when it comes to interacting with Tracey. The sound of laughter and contagious smiles across their faces, makes it hard to think otherwise. Tracey does well wherever she goes, but that department seems to fit her demeanor the best. Also, PEDS leans more toward the average range of $50,000-70,000 a year. After all the clinicals and experience in this field, it seems as if it's everything she's ever dreamed of.

Occupational therapists work in a variety of settings. One, being in schools Pre-K through any age. 

PEDS/Schools - OT Room

Each have their own particular level of what type of patients they are dealing with and how they use the equipment. For instance, schools usually help deal with kids who have speech problems, or are maybe autistic. Mainly it's to help the young child prepare their role as a student and achieve their academic goals. When walking into a classroom school level OT's room, it's set up in very colorful dynamics with small plastic chairs, flooded with a variety of boxes with crayola crayons, markers, colored pencils, walls of excessively large white boards, and giant alphabet letters all around the room. In other words, it's very kid safe and fun. Being in this room is almost as if you are in one of the famous PBS kids show, Elmo's World with the amount of educational toys, mind blowing range of colors and games. One interesting use of therapy is in a room called "The sensory room". This room contains excessive equipment such as large swings, bicycles, and ropes that help the patient's develop motor planning, which involves how to come up with something such as walking or jumping. The most odd use of therapy that catches my eye out of all this useful equipment are these inflatable pits that contain red, blue, green and yellow smaller sized plastic circular balls. This wide ranged ball pit connects to a sound system that causes vibrations for the child that may have a stressful episode and need the vibration senses to calm him/her down. "This is one of the coolest things about my job, I'm always learning something new on how to deal with a patient's problem and help them move forward in doing better. It not only helps me as an OT, but also a person in giving me hope for the future successes of our patients." Tracey stated. Another effective use of therapy is an educational game called "Blink". This game is played with a 9 year old boy with autism and main goal is to help with his manual dexterity, form consistency, such as when he matches up the shapes and colors along with numbers and visual perception of the game, and just overall development from beginning to then end. As he plays, he becomes more and more interested, as if he was learning! The longer he's playing, the more intriguing this game is getting to him. Tracey's goal was accomplished today. She made the patient comfortable, relaxed, while learning and developing. Can't forget the sound of his bubbly and effortless laughs either!

Hospital/Nursing home OT Room

Next important OT facility is the health care facility. This environment all varies with difficulty in care giving depending on the patient and their current diagnosis. Many think children are easier to work with due to them being so young and having a lack of knowledge or experience than most adults, but depending on the level of patience and comfort, adults may be easier. An OT room in this particular setting, looks a bit more dull than a child's room in my opinion. Mostly because the adult patients tend to need more equipment along with their size. When entering you notice a lot of foam mats, sectioned stations for each different therapy and even areas just to sit and speak with the patient.Once again, depending on the patient and their goal, I've noticed every room has something different. These ones tend to be more plain, with large equipment.

"Don't get me wrong, I love my job, but things can get a little hectic and difficult. This job definitely requires a lot of patience." Tracey says to me. Speaking of difficult, patient's with more serious cases such as a woman whom Tracey has as a patient in the hospitality unit that I'm unable to specify due to the HIPPA law, has had a stroke and was trying to ask Tracey for a hair brush but kept saying "pen". Every time my sister brings her a pen, irritated with anger in her voice, she'd throw the pen. Confusedly, I continue to watch this for several minutes. I noticed after a few more aggressive motions and numerous hand signals, my sister began to realize the touching of her head has nothing to do with a pen, but that she simply wants to brush her hair. With Occupational Therapy, you start to develop more of a feel with these type of situations and train your brain to think outside of the box. All falling back to the patient's condindependence again.ition. What's there diagnosis? How long have they had this? Have you read their documentations? Getting to know the patient. After a day's work, that's what I've learned is most important about an Occupational Therapist and succeeding in the patients life toward