Will I ever be good enough? OT student Fears

Okay, I got this letter from a sweet OT student, sharing her fieldwork fears, who is clearly going to be JUST FINE. 🙂 So my answer is on top, her e-mail is on bottom.

Regarding the fear of not being good enough yet, or that you’ll never be good enough: ASKING THAT QUESTION MEANS YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH. 🙂 if you have a healthy respect (sometimes fear) of what you don’t know, you will always strive to learn more – with continuing education, reaching out to mentors, etc. It means you are far above most people/therapists and that you clearly show the compassion/concern/desire for growth that makes you an excellent clinician.

It’s true, your skills aren’t perfect yet -and won’t be for a long time. But with each day you will learn new things and slowly you will see the growth you want. Having a good mentor – or multiple mentors – is huge. Reach out to people you admire in the field. Talk to your co-workers. Read books written by people with the diagnoses you treat. Read community forums for those people. Put yourself in their shoes. Practice with your cooperative friends. Observe people in the supermarket. I promise you, these skills that seem so elusive, will eventually come.

Just keep working at them and realize you are doing your best. Also, everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses. There are things that you as a new practitioner bring to the table that an experienced practitioner can’t – such as fresh eyes, recent education, a (hopefully) still unjaded attitude, a creativity for “out of the box” ideas that mostly comes from not knowing any better/different, and then your own therapeutic value. You may have more compassion, more kindness, more creativity, who knows. A lot of times patients are helped just by having someone there who cares. Realize that half the battle – if not more – is just having the patient feel that sense of value/connection with you. Using your “therapeutic use of self.”

So have faith in yourself. Believe in yourself. Know that as long as you ALWAYS know – even twenty years from now – that you don’t know everything and that’s okay. Know that we are in a profession that thrives on constant growth and development, and NONE of us, not even the AOTA president or your most revered OT mentor, know it all. There will be periods you feel great about your growth, periods where you are depressed about what you don’t know, and periods where you don’t care or think you are doing fine. It will all balance out. Just keep growing the way you are now and you will be fine.

PS: I guarantee you will do things in your first year (or years) where you will look back and go WHAT WAS I THINKING OH MY GOSH. Or “I’m such a fraud. They like me and think I am doing a good job but I have no idea what I’m doing.” That’s okay. Everyone feels like a fraud. Everyone has those movements of retrospection where they realize what all they didn’t know. Just keep working to improve your skills, realize you don’t know what you don’t know, but as long as you follow the mantra of “Do no harm”, you’ll be okay, and you’ll survive those moments of WHAT WAS I DOING?! 🙂
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Hi Karen,
I am a fourth year OT student at the University of EDITED, currently on my level II Fieldwork. I came across your blog when researching one of my many projects and it was a big encouragement (and nice distraction!) for me. Thank you for writing it!  I needed a little humor, and reading many of your postings rung true with my own experiences in OT school! It’s so nice to know that you have been there, made it through and are now a successful practitioner (because sometimes we wonder…is it all worth it? Will I make it through, graduate, practice for a while, learn, become awesome, and NOT hurt my patients? lol)

As I have been both excited and challenged by my experiences in fieldwork,  I found that I would really love to ask you a few questions, if you wouldn’t mind.

First, I am very afraid for my first patients. I have learned treatment planning pretty well in an inpatient rehab setting (as well as can be expected after three months), but I am still struggling with evaluations. I’m missing silly things like tone, or misjudging ROM or balance, things that I am super super annoyed with because I feel like I should know them! Ugh! I really want to believe that I’ll be a great OT, but that’s hard right now when I can’t imagine it, although I’ve been trying very hard to master skills, (I know I lack clinical reasoning). I’m scared that I won’t be able to pick up on all the details I need to to holistically treat my patients and give them the quality care that they deserve, It’s so frustrating! Any suggestions for how to improve, and/or what the first few years are like after graduation?

I won’t take up any more of your time, but I am so glad I found your blog, wish you all the best, and hope to hear from you soon!

Thanks so much!
Sincerely,
JANE DOE, Occupational Therapy Student
University EDITED

Great sensory article in OT Advance :)

http://occupational-therapy.advanceweb.com/Editorial/Content/Editorial.aspx?CC=236729

Pretty detailed stuff! May need to keep this in mind myself! 🙂

OT in Gifford's case

Great article about PT/ST/OT in Gifford's rehab!
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2014685962_apuscongresswomanshotdischarge.html?emc=lm&m=645114&l=4&v=2724938

OT PR!

http://www.onlinecollege.org/industry-experts/health-and-medicine/occupational-therapist/meet-an-occupational-therapist-karen-dobyns/

A recent online interview with Online College! I wrote my answers up in a hurry (my first week of training for the new job so a little overwhelmed with other stuff to do) so it's not my best stuff but it's still cool! 🙂

The social media article just came out!

I was reading Cheryl's blog and saw that apparently the social media article was in the March 28th issue of OT Practice, so it just came out…hopefully I don't sound too crazy in the article. Unfortunately I haven't been posting much lately, however it is spring break here (since I work for a school district), so I will likely have some time to blog! I still have to get my taxes and a few other things done though too! And catch up on my hideously behind e-mails. Yes I know, the same statement I make every time I blog. BUT THIS TIME I MEAN IT……hahaha.

I've accumulated a larggge pile of OT stuff just in the last month so I do feel like I have a lot to share! Maybe I can go through my current bag of OT tools to share sometime soon.

If any of you have stopped by here for the first time because of the OT Practice article, please comment and/or e-mail and let me know. And for those of you waiting for an e-mail from me from recent weeks (like the few I e-mailed promising a reply soon). I haven't forgotten about you, I promise! 🙂

OT in schools

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/03/25/california.triplets.visitation/index.html?hpt=T2

Really awesome (temporary though) ruling that a severely disabled mother (due to suffering severe brain damage during birth to her triplets) can have visitation rights.

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Two ideas for kids who press down too lightly while writing: Have them draw on TRIPLICATE paper (ie that carbon copy stuff). So they can see if it gets down to bottom layer of paper.  Or, use rainbow scratch paper with the tiny wooden dowels – have to do it kind of hard for the rainbow paper underneath to show up!

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I made a new game last night called “Silly Sentences”…..You start a sentence with “The” and then you roll the dice and it corresponds to an adjective 1-12 on a list….you have to write down the adjective that corresponds with what you rolled. Then same thing for a noun. Then same thing for whatever the grammatical term is (preposition??) for “over the, under the, at the” etc. Then again for another location/place/noun whatever. So this would be like a group activity ideally – like 4 lists and 4 kids each get a chance to roll and find their word. You end up with silly sentences like “The funny bug crawls under the park” or “The green boy jumps over the sky”. You have them cup their hands while rolling the dice (work on developing those palmar arches) and you can also work on the visual scan component of finding their number/word on the list, plus of course, the main purpose, which is the handwriting. 🙂 Word by word.

So last night I very quickly made up this game and just came up with several lists of 12 words ie nouns, verbs, adjectives….in big print and put them in a sheet protector. You can modify this as you wish. Does this make sense???

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A tip that is so basic that um, I only recently learned! Put a worksheet in a sheet protector and use dry erase markers on it to do the worksheet (ie one where you just circle a few things)….don't have to keep making copies and can re-use and the kids like the novelty of dry-erase….sheet protectors + dry erase markers = new fav thing 😉

I got a few tips from another school OT Libby that I will be posting shortly….and have a few other OT blog related emails I need to get through this week…but most of all I have tons and tons and tons of OT paperwork to get through this weekend so I can feel more organized with this new job! Loving working in the schools so far! All day long every day I think of stuff I want to share….of course by the end of the day I'm exhausted and have forgotten most of what I specifically wanted to share, and/or am too tired to write it up.

Today I was at 3 different schools and then I drove over an hour in Friday rush hour traffic to go spend evening with my Grandma….every Friday night I take her to dinner and then we watch a movie….although she just moved in with one of my aunts so we are waiting on the TV so no movie lately…tonight we went to a Marie Calendar's and had an early dinner of chicken pot pies and pies, hung out in her mini suite and read books and then I filmed her for about 30 minutes on my Flip as we chatted some about her childhood etc. She is lots of fun. 🙂 I am in love with her heat dish from Costco! So are the dogs.

Tomorrow I have Pilates early in the AM and then the rest of the day I pretty much just need to do OT, OT, OT, OT, OT….the pile of stuff to go through is so ridiculous. I love resources and therefore accumulate resources, hoard them, then get overwhelmed with how much I get and can't keep up. Vicious cycle I tell ya.

GOOD NIGHT….hopefully you WILL hear from me this weekend with OT ideas/tips/tricks/thoughts/e-mail/blog catch up!
KD

AOTA Competition for Students

I hope more of you are doing the AOTA student competition to make videos! Here is a cute one! My friend/blog reader/OT student with a really hard name (so I will call her Annadhabahanadi this time but it changes every time), sent this to me!

otexchange.com

I totally just spent like an hour+ on OTExchange.com…you have to sign up to become a member but it's worth it! 🙂 A lot of school-based OTs on there (Tonya, I saw one of your comments! 🙂 )

Okay….now that I just got a lot of great information for general school purposes, but have done nothing specific for MY job, I better get back to work for a while!! My daily schedule these days looks like this: Get up at 6. Leave by 6:45am (because I got everything ready the night before). Get to school by 7:30am. See kids direct in pull-out, push-in,and do lots of consult (I am still shadowing the OT whose caseload I am inheriting by the way). Leave by 4pm. Go to Pilates/exercise, come home, shower, prepare for next day (clothes, food), and then do 1-2 hours of paperwork stuff. That will probably increase exponentially once I am no longer shadowing. 🙂 Then try to go to bed early! I am exhausted!

So tonight I wasted a lot of time on OTexchange – although it was useful stuff – so I better stop. notice I said that a paragraph ago but then went on to blabber. Oh well.

By the way, I got a message from a blog reader/now FB friend/OT student, Meredith, who said her classmate found my blog and liked it, then saw Meredith's blog on the sidebar! Small world! Thanks Meredith's classmate for liking my blog!!

So….two tiny tiny things I've seen recently…..AS ALWAYS DO ANYTHING I MENTION AT YOUR OWN RISK….I'm NOT recommending you try anything I say! Just sharing interesting/cool things! (IMHO that is). 🙂

1) Putting a small (2 inches??) bit of aquarium tubing on the end of a pencil to serve as a chewie for kids with oral motor needs. It's not quite as obvious as other things like “chewelry”. I have not tried this myself and I would want to research carefully first to make sure the tubing was safe to chew on (I think it is?)  and B) that the child was at no risk of choking on it.

2) An OT recommended that when using the tiny piece of paper towel (we're talking like an inch square) to wipe off the chalkboard slate used in the Handwriting without Tears program, she has the child raise the hand with the towel and then crumple it up using JUST that one hand in the air, to strengthen the intrinsic muscles of the hand/promote in-hand manipulation, instead of using both hands to crumple it up. This is surprisingly hard for some kids!

OKAY ENOUGH PROCRASTINATION….that was two tiny bones….use at your own risk!
KD

I was clearly wrong

when I said I would have a blogging blizzard this weekend. That Handwriting without Tears course really wore me out  this weekend (not hard, but a lot of material and a long time) – I have SO many random tips I am accumulating but I guess Im going to try for this weekend instead since I don't have any courses!!

alright, get OTely excited

I am hoping tomorrow to do a massive blog blizzard as I try to devote most of tomorrow to OT stuff – catching up on school-related OT things I need to review in regards to BrainGym, Superflex, “Vision Efficiency” skills, Handwriting without Tears (I took the course yesterday and today all day), etc….so….look forward to it, I know you can't wait. Either can I. haha.