Occupational Therapy
13
Apr
2011
Job interview thought process
Some of the questions I wanted to ask when I was job interviewing within a hospital….
weekend rotation
how many pts a day
productivity
training/mentorship
common diagnoses
continuing ed support/reimbursement
teamwork between OTs/PTs here
rotating diff teams and units?
typical salary/benefits????
how big is the department?
what skill set do OTs need?
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none
13
Apr
2011
OTs in Mental Health
I need to see if my friend Brooke, who works in Mental Health as an OT at a prestigious location, would post something on mental health OT! I saw this comment and wanted to re-post it and ask if I have any mental health OT readers! I loved my mental health rotation even though it was challenging and even scary at times. I need to revisit it in my brain and see what else I can post!
Mel writes:
Hey! I’m an occupational therapist in Montreal and I found your blog a couple of years ago when I first graduated. I’ve been working in mental health for the last 3 years with adults who have psychosis or mood disorders. I agree that there aren’t that many OTs working in mental health and there’s even fewer who blog about it so I was really excited with your post. I think as OTs we definitely have more to offer than assessing cognitive levels. I think the values of our profession and our ability to analyze activity allow us to assist this population in their rehabilitation and recovery. Although I often struggle with defining (and defending) my role in psychiatry, I think we play an important part in helping them reintegrate into the community and redefine themselves.
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none
13
Apr
2011
Matthew, a UK OT asks about Fieldwork placement…
Matthew asks:
Not sure if this is appropriate to ask for input from your readers as I don’t know if you have many from the UK but we are looking to offer an internship / placement opportunity to prospective OT students and would love to get any feedback around what would be the most helpful way of structuring this to make sure we give the students the most benefit:
Any feedback from your readers would be fabulous and well done once again and hope it all goes well.
Matthew
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none
13
Apr
2011
Tips to Incoming OT Students? Anything to add?
I was asked recently (by an enthusiastic Klaudia) if I had any updates to my “Tips to Incoming MOT Students”, seeing as how I wrote that in month into OT school and now I’ve been out for several years. http://otstudents.blogspot.com/2007/04/tips-to-incoming-mot-students.html, and so I re-read it and decided….that first of all, wow, I wrote that in April of 2007, so this is five years later, zomg. 🙂 I feel crazy old. But you know what? All those tips are still true. I don’t think I have any new ones to add – the ones about being flexible and remembering the OT world is small (so watch the gossip) are probably the most valid. Anybody else have thoughts on the matter? New ones to add?
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none
13
Apr
2011
Updated my sidebar with new (to me) OT blogs
- Linda at http://www.lindasdailylivingskills.com has some really thorough and insightful blog posts on OT!
Dani, who says “Oh, add mine, add mine! I'm an OT student in the UK in my second year. It's not entirely about OT, but about my life learning in general.” http://www.munchkinandflan.com
Tink who is about to become an OT student, http://tink343-unistudentlife.blogspot.com/
- Mendel, with a really thought-provoking site at http://kidsatthought.com/
Don't forget to check out TherapyFunZone http://www.therapyfunzone.com/ which has great stuff (I saw she very recently posted some new ideas!) and I am also loving OT in Public Schools http://otinpublicschools.blogspot.com/
I recommend using Google Reader or some other RSS reader so that you know when new posts come in, all in one spot, rather than having to go check each blog individually. I love Google Reader. 🙂
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 2
13
Apr
2011
Nurse in Haiti
My cousin is a nurse who recently went to Haiti to help out for a week. She wrote us two mails – here is one and hopefully I will find the other one. I also know an OT friend who went to Haiti a few months after the earthquake and I am hoping she will share some of her experiences here! I just asked her. 🙂 I know this is an OT blog and not a nursing one, but hey, it's healthcare, so good to see the perspective!
——–
Update:
No way I can even BEGIN to describe it here but, on a quick break so, little update.
First of all, wow! This experience is a real exercise in patience. For example, I'm hungry. We get 2 meals a day, 10am and 4hours later, 2pm (mind you, I am working nights so the food comes while I am sleeping). Luckily, I had found a stash of granola bars etc. in the fridge, which, was like gold. Then today, I went back, and the whole bag was gone. My heart dropped. Lying in bed, I was agonizing over the stolen power bars, “Why didn't I steal them first!?” I have never been in a place where there is no option for more food. So, I was lying there, trying to fall asleep, literlly unable to get the damn hyjacked granola bars off of my mind when I realized… what is really keeping me from falling alsleep? Am I really that hungry. When I focused more on the sensation of hunger, I realized, its not that bad… it was the frustration and loss of security of knowing that there is backup food that was really bothring me. So now, Im better… 2 meals a day is more than most people here get. I am definitely not starving. So, se la vie.
Many other things are difficult. It's cold (the americans I room with insist on air conditioning the room). I don't have a towel. Don't have lots of things… but, Ive adjusted…
I am working nights, 6pm-6am. Haiti is a total mess. When we arrived, people were hanging on the fences, clawing through the holes, yelling… Our haitian escorts rushed us through the crowds, jammed us into the back of a van, and swept us away. We are not allowed to leave the hospital compound… absolutely forbidden. And from the looks of the people comming through the ED, I understand why. lots of stab wounds, gashes, broken bones, etc…. Not even a local will walk home alone at night. I feel like I am working in a refugee camp. I have never before been somewhere so isolated… with no peek, other than the injured patients, at what lies outside the walls of this compound.
We arrived Sat around 10am, had orientation, slept a few hours and started working that night at 6. Luckily, I am here with a coworker, “T”, and we were placed on the same shift. We literally jumped in. The “med surge” beds,”ëmergency room” and “icu” are all connected so, we work where we are needed. Last night, when the stab victim came in, I was on one arm starting an IV, another nurse on the other, and a 3rd woman priming bags of normal salined to start pumping fluids back into her. Everyone here works togeter… there is no doctor this, nurse that…. if a job needs to be done, you figure it out, and do it. Period. We don't know where anythings is, the supplies are noexistent or different, but, you do what you can do. I have started reusing gloves because we are running out. There is not even a sink to was your hands in. No soap. All the beds are in one small room, the family members stay close by and feed, toilet, and clean their loved ones. People, when they can, pee on a bucket on the floor.
I signed up to donate blood. That will be the one time I will get to get out of this joint and see what is going on behind these walls. There is no blood here. At home, we transfuse at a hemoglobin of 7, sometimes even 10. A woman came in today with a hemoglobin of 2! I didn't even know that was possible.
We will be working all 7 days. We sleep in bunk beds (there are 7 night nurses in one room) outside of the emergency room. I can not even put this experience into words quickly enough (I have to get back, I am on shift right now) but, let me say….
I don't know how I waited 29 years to do something like this. I am reconsidering my entire life plan and trying to figure out if it is possible to work internationally while being a mother. I have never in my life had such a humbling experience. I have never seen people that love their families so much. THIS is medicine. THIS is healthcare. There are no rules in place that dumb down the decisions you make or the actions you take. You look, listen, assess, and treat.
One of my patient's today is a 15 year old boy who was hit by a car, thrown up into the air, and broke his femur when he landed back on the top of the car…. I can't speak with him but, I wish I could. I wish I could comfort him more, give him a game to play with…. I considered bringing out my ipod but then realized it would likely create more drama that happiness. He is so stoic.
It's probablly 90 degrees here and we have no cups. We give patients water 30cc's at a time (less than a shot glass).
I could go on and on and I have only been here 1…2? days (nights is so disorienting).
All I know is,
this is life.
It kinda sucks (soap and a towel would be nice considering the blood I am stepping in) but, it's so invigorationg to feel like I am actually doing something with my life.
p.s. sorry for all the typos, super rushed,
xox
The classic, “perspective” we get when we leave our cushy lives.
Anwyas, internet here is spordic (there is one sometimes functioning laptop for all of us), but, Im here, safe, and happy.
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none
13
Apr
2011
SpongeBob washing + OT month in Times Square!
Basically I am going through months of mail including newsletters, emails from former co-workers, blog comments, e-mails, etc, hence the massive posts right now as I try to clear through the mailbox – I still have 76 new mails + over a 1,000 to go through. 🙁 Anyway, two random bits
1) During this month (OT MONTH! APRIL IS OT MONTH!), Times Square in NYC is running an advertisement for OT EVERY HOUR! That is CRAZY! Have any of you seen this? 🙂 Definitely high-def.
2) A former-coworker/supervisor/physical therapist wrote me to tell me that one of my OT ideas is still a hit for the child to do while in PT! I got a turkey baster from the dollar store, filled a bin with water, and then the child “washes” SpongeBob using the turkey baster – I had a SpongeBob PotatoHead that likes to be washed! I left him in my former clinic because he was so popular. Anyway – so – idea – have the child use a turkey baster to “wash” their favorite toy. It works on the child's hand strength and a little on sequencing – so it can be an OT tool by itself, or it can turn into a PT tool if the child is using it as an engrossing activity while working on standing/kneeling/whatever! 🙂
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none
13
Apr
2011
I love OT, yes I do…..
I love this!
One of my blog readers/now Facebook friends/current OT student/current OT student blogger, who I will label “M”, wrote me to let me know one of her classmates found my blog by googling “I love OT”. And then that classmate discovered through my sidebar that “M” had a blog too! Small world. I LOVE that my blog was found by googling “I love OT”. And I love that M's classmate googled that in the first place. 🙂
Hey, speaking of loving OT….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJRIVUOtCzs this was our Miss OTPF pageant from 2008, one of our silly OT contestants was a cheerleader who cheers about OT spirit. 🙂
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none
13
Apr
2011
Fun & Function – SPD blogger network
Can y'all tell I am on a blogging blizzard tonight? At the expense of my taxes of course. But I have felt really guilty about getting so behind on responding to blog reader e-mail/comments etc, and I am finally opening up months worths of newsletters. Fun & Function has a good newsletter and Facebook page and I just learned about the SPD blogger network through them. http://www.spdbloggernetwork.com/about/
Check it out and also check out Fun & Function (google it!). 🙂 It will be helpful for OT/OT students alike.
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none
13
Apr
2011
Tips from a school OT :)
I am copy/pasting tips from an e-mail I got recently from a school OT I will name “L”! Great ideas/thoughts that she gave, as always use at your own risk!
One of the things I have been loving lately are mechanical pencils. They are wonderful tools for those students who push too hard on their pencil or their pencil is never sharp. Some teachers only allow sharpening 3 pencils at the beginning of the day and then that is it. Unfortunately, the students I see need sharp pencils! This also isn't as nice to chew on as wood pencils-although if there is a will there is a way!
I also use the rubber tubing at the top of pencils for a chewy section. I used to glue them in when they didn't seem to fit right, however I found just wrapping the pencil with tape can provide enough diameter to make the chewy part stay put.
I love adapted paper and carry it with me practically everywhere. I keep it in a binder tucked in sheet protectors and refill when I am in the office. I also put screening tools in there and freebies off of the HWT website-like the sheet that tells how to form all the letters appropriately.
Planning and scheduling can be very difficult-I work in small school districts so I hit one school district Monday through Thursday. At the beginning of the year I set up a schedule for the students on IEP's and try to work around activities as much as possible. What is difficult is I think in days of the week, so when it is Tuesday and I forgot something on Monday, I am not going to remember it until next Monday-probably when I am already at the school. I just purchased a Samsung Galaxy S and am using for my calendar and notes and whatnot. I still have a hard planner and write things down in there as well.
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none