s

rk

how helpful having a student could be. 

student

you can learn from anyone as long as you are willing to keep an open mind

myself

solidified that I want to have students when I practice not only to give back to the profession and students,

acclimated

ut getting them back to there everyday life and overcoming the injury and the negative mental health scars that come with them as well.  

e

mental health issues due to injurie

ptsd

that

k

Taking

s

light up

d

I more than most people they would see has an idea of some of the things that they had been through and the mental demons they may be facing.

A

d

then

how the therapist take that information knowing him and build their protocols around it.

that

the

surgery

evidenced based

I had the opportunity to follow an orthopedic surgeon from the Memphis Orthopedic Group that provides the clinic with many of its referrals.

have

done

South African Journal of Occupational Therapy

n

In order to do that I will continue to be an AOTA member as a professional practitioner as I start and continue my practicing career. 

all the work they do in support of therapist that we do not see.

us

therapist

Evidence Based Clinician 

I think that they were appreciative of the fact that I was able to remain ethically grounded and tell them that I appreciated the gesture. 

been

VA

rotation

but to live that lifestyle in our personal life s well. 

Because

g

The the

, and if

t

notes,

One of the instances that I can demonstrate that I functioned autonomously is when on my first level II fieldwork rotation in which I ran the outpatient clinic on my own for multiple days, and still had to work and see acute patients as well.

find a better way to explain them to my clients. 

,

. B

,

ooked more and more into the evidence

services

have found that how important it is that one practices evidence based practice has become important over the course of my fieldwork rotations.

I’m definitely glad that I had that opportunity to have that session early in my fieldwork rotations because it help provide a great lesson early on for not me, but a student in a separate discipline as well. 

Ethically Grounded Professional With a Strong OT Identity

hard working

She asked if she could talk to me in private, and we spoke after the group session was over.

I believe that one of the most important ways to demonstrate fulfilling the commitment to the professional community is by demonstrating the fact that even as a student, I can demonstrate to other disciplines that occupational therapists are professionals.

It felt good to help her and avoid a possible setback in not only her care but her safety as well. 

workers

does

,

.

this population as a whole is underrepresented

Leader Change Agent 

Occupation Client Centered Practitione

The patient was very excited and was thrilled that we had the idea to work on this with him. 

reminder of how to improvise with what you have laying around

come

It felt really good to know that I was apart of the process to help her treatment

also helped me build a rapport with her

so I squatted down

in

They were both happy to be able to do the treatments at home, and to be able to do them effectively as well. 

y

I found that a lot of non-verbal communication has to do with the look on your face when describing what you were expecting, and that a smile will get someone to work harder than a frown majority of the time. 

lifespan

I know that TNOTA is trying to build its membership and political sway at this time, and I look forward to finding a way to support those goals as a new practitioner.

manage

"Learning from failure (or simply not meeting one's own high expectations), and then pushing forward with plans B, C, D, E, and F with grace, and guidance, builds resilience, which might be even more key an attribute than flexibility, when it comes to OT practice.  Resilience is, in a sense, the opposite of the self-hate and imposter syndrome so many OT students struggle with.  It's an affirmation from within one's own self that this is going to be ok, maybe even in the face of someone else's potential frustration with you.  That is so hard for me, and I suspect for many empathetic people who really care what other's think of them.  But resilience is what allows you to stand up and fix, or at least learn from, your mistakes instead of simply being defeated."

I can kill them with kindness with the best of them, and most of the time, I can even turn a heated conversation around into a positive experience."

I joked with him about how bad my handwriting was, and said that his was better, and that I didn't even have a tremor! 

I felt very confident in my ability to present on this topic, and my inservice generated a lively discussion about practical applications in the clinic.  I received feedback that I was well-spoken, confident, and good at answering questions on the fly. 

I think making that progress ultimately made me more proud than if I'd started off the rotation with flawless transfer technique.

I was initially nervous about giving my FWE this feedback, but I knew that my time was limited, and I really wanted to get the most out of my pediatric experience.

As my first step in lifelong education, I plan to attend Church Health's Mental Health First Aid certification training program in order improve my crisis management skills for my future practice.  In nearly any setting, an OT can encounter clients and family members who have just undergone a traumatic experience, particularly in mental health and hospital settings.  I'm looking forward to having the skills to assess and initially manage a client's crisis, since I often wished I had more advanced training in this area during my inpatient and community mental health rotations.

I had the opportunity to be an inter-professional mentor

This information will be useful for future OT students at the site as well as non-OT staff and volunteer leaders at the site, and the results I received allowed me to develop client-centered programming for the group.

When working closely among PTs and SLPSs during my pediatrics rotation, I found it important to keep clearly in mind the domain of occupational therapy throughout the OT process so that I wouldn't lose sight of what my unique skill set was.  My FWE wrote above that I did a good job of using occupation during intervention, but I also had opportunities during evaluation to ask parents and children about their daily lives and what occupations were most affected and most valuable to them.  My FWEs were great models for using those valued family occupations to shape client goals instead of simply picking the next Peabody milestone, which then made it easy for me to incorporate occupation into treatment planning and discharge planning as well.

I love this painting by one of my clients on my pediatric rotation because it represents a real success of combining clinical expertise, patient values, and evidence, and my client also had a lot of fun!  I was working with a child who was struggling with both fine motor and visual perceptual prerequisites to writing, drawing, and many other occupations.  I could tell that she was bored with simply drawing shapes, which was often frustrating for her, so I asked if she would like to paint with a paintbrush instead during one session.  Her eyes lit up, and she did a little dance while she picked her two favorite paint colors.  I knew using my activity analysis skills that she would be working on many of the same skills required to draw and write, and that evidence shows that working on a real occupation instead of a contrived activity more fully engages the brain and leads to faster functional gains, in many cases.  Since she was painting a picture for her mother, this was a real occupation instead of a worksheet exercise, and she both worked hard and had a good time.

My FWE reported back to me that a number of clinicians said my presentation gave them truly useful information about TBI treatment best practice.

I felt like it was good practice to think about the population I was working with and then seek out additional education that would inform my practice. 

Professional Network on Aging's annual conference. 

I built rapport slowly

I was careful to be discrete in public areas of the facility when speaking to other staff about the nature of someone's needs, in keeping with the standard of autonomy and confidentiality.

I felt confident functioning autonomously in each setting before I left and felt sure I could succeed in each setting as an entry-level practitioner. 

I had an incredible number of opportunities to promote the unique perspective and value of OT on my mental health rotation.  For instance, I wrote on 2/9/18:"I had a great conversation today with a new intern who is just beginning a counseling master's practicum with the psychologist here.  Much like I'm doing, his goal is to start working with clients while also paving the way for future students to provide services at the center.  We each shared about how we see our profession's role in community mental health and at this site specifically.  He says his pipe dream is to open a network of LGBT mental health centers in different cities in the South, starting with Memphis.  I totally sold him on including OT in that pipe dream, and I gave him a quick rundown of OT philosophy and OT's possible roles in a clinic like that.  So many great opportunities for interdisciplinary learning here!"

One way I'm fulfilling my commitments to the professional OT community is by maintaining my AOTA membership.  After the therapy cap was repealed this year, it's been even more apparent to me that AOTA is really doing its best to speak for the OT profession at a high level.  Also, I've been following the discussion about the compulsory entry-level OTD, and as I'm very skeptical about the motives and benefits of this move, I'm interested in being a part of the conversation if I can. 

I chose to work with an LGBTQ community center as my COTS facility for my emerging practice mental health rotation because I knew that Memphis's LGBT population has a lot of unmet needs, and I wanted to explore how OT could help meet those needs and help develop a relationship between UTHSC and the community center.  I specifically chose to work primarily with LGBT seniors since they have their own unique challenges as they age and are often overlooked by the larger LGBT community.

I used the MOHO to guide my work with the Senior Services Committee on my mental health rotation.  My work with them included developing and carrying out a population needs assessment as well as program development based on those results.  After conducting background research on occupational issues and barriers facing older LGBT adults, I chose the MOHO-based Role Checklist as the main component of my needs assessment.  It allowed me to determine frequency of participation in 10 major roles and their accompanying occupations as well as the value placed on each of these roles.  I also included free-text questions asking for more specific information about barriers to occupational participation.  I was able to use the results to paint a picture of the population's motivations, routines, and performance capacities.  I used this information to determine what occupational needs were already being met by the committee's programming and what type of new program might fill an existing need.  I then wrapped up my fieldwork placement by presenting these findings to the committee, including information and resources needed to carry out this peer-led programming.  The above picture is a handout from my presentation that introduces the social walking program I proposed, which was met with much enthusiasm and is already being included in the programming lineup for a series of events celebrating older LGBT adults in May.

One treatment session in which I felt like I'd really succeeded with using client motivation was my invention of "Marble Town".  I had a client in my pediatrics rotation who needed to work on handwriting in order to improve his participation in occupations at school, but he really did not enjoy it, and he had enough cognitive impairment that "first-then" negotiation rarely worked.  During one session, I noticed that he loved a new toy that involved building a track with ramps and funnels for marbles to go through. The next session, I created a worksheet for him to fill out before he played with the marble game called "Marble Town" in which he envisioned what a whole town of marbles would be like by choosing the town's mayor, official animal, etc.  Normally, he would ask to abbreviate words during writing exercises or pick a very short word wherever possible, but when I asked him to choose the town song of Marble Town, he wrote out the longest phrase I'd seen yet: "Plunk Goes the Marble."  He was so excited to be writing about something he found interesting, and I was very pleased that he formed more letters during that session than in the previous two or three combined.  

My on-site supervisor was not one to give praise lightly, so it demonstrated that she had really come to rely on me as a part of the team and was confident in my skills and professionalism.

He seemed to relax, and I think he felt confident that I wouldn't make fun of him for being worried that I would call him stupid, since I was asking him to do things he found difficult, and he usually avoided activities that might show his weaknesses in this way.

I think he liked that I incorporated rainbows into the activity.

it was important for me to be assertive and clear about what I wanted the handler to do with the dog in order for me to work towards my client's goals. 

political

I feel thought less of me after the meetings.

All of the people in the below photo consented to having their names shown.

US

I feel that I have met the goal I set for myself by gaining experience working as part of a therapy team and by working closely with OTA students."

We worked on strength and balance by carrying buckets of "feed" across the room. We worked on fine motor skills by opening a simulated gate latch.

Without innovation, occupational therapy loses what makes it unique.

Takes risks to maximize outcomes.​

I tried to advocate for the value of OT whenever I could.

There were two team meetings in particular where members of the counseling staff asked the OT staff why they were necessary and suggested in front of everyone that the department head eliminate the OT positions

Humor is an important aspect of personal interaction. It is important to me that my patients have a positive experience in therapy and appropriate humor can make the therapy experience more enjoyable for everyone involved. Humor can also be used to defuse potentially unpleasant situations in therapy. I make it a point to try to incorporate appropriate humor into every treatment session.  Below is a letter that one of my fieldwork educators wrote for me to serve as a letter of reference if I should need one. I was pleased to see that she noted this quality in her reference about halfway down the page.

. That moment really stuck out to me because I felt like I was making a valuable contribution to the treatment team. ​"

I was able to complete the fieldwork rotation in the allotted time. I had planned on potentially needing some extra time off, so I had worked extra hours from the beginning of the rotation.

Below is a picture of my son.

I feel that I have met the goal I set for myself by gaining experience working as part of a therapy team and by working closely with OTA students."

I set a goal for myself to improve my ability to work well with other team members.

Below is a screenshot of his comment on my evaluation skills for the final student evaluation.​

Demonstrates the ability to give constructive and timely feedback.

I plan to pursue a specialty certification as I move forward with my practice.

Contributes to the knowledge base of OT practice by mentoring students, performing research, publishing, presenting and/or teaching.

I feel it can be easy to focus on specific deficits when evaluating, goal setting, and treating patients. This is a mistake and does not due the patient justice in their treatment time. Occupational therapy looks at the patient as a whole rather than the sum of their deficits. During my rotations, I have attempted to maintain a treatment style that incorporates meaningful activities and occupations into the session to better prepare the client for discharge back to the life they want. Below is a screenshot from my final evaluation on my first rotation. My fieldwork educator thought it worth mentioning that I attempted to make treatment meaningful.

Our daily groups consist of an education portion that is frequently tied to some sort of art activity, and a craft portion where we allow the patients to engage in craft activities that they choose." 

occupational therapy and utilizes an evidence based approach to practice.

Invests in the acquisition of evidence through participation in workshops, continued education and pursuit of additional degrees.

role model for honesty, integrity, and morally grounded decision making.

Below is a screenshot of my final evaluation from my first fieldwork rotation. My fieldwork educator made the comment that I consistently followed the AOTA code of ethics.  ​

Below are my passing final scores for each of the rotations. ​​

I set some goals for mysel

The presentation is made to the entire treatment team.

many projects / assignments to be completed. I

The doctor ultimately decided to discharge the patient after an additional assessment, but I feel good that I at least tried to give the patient another chance." 

The following quote is taken from a discussion post talking about one such individual and the measures I took to ensure that he had fair representation as a patient while he stayed with us.

Below is a screenshot of the different theories I identified as important in my first rotation.

The quote that follows references my fieldwork educator from my first rotation and what he taught me was important during treatment. 

 E

provide

he following quote is from a discussion post detailing a patient interaction. 

I got to work on my communication skills with a population consisting of patients with mental health deficits. T

of

  I do not have to be a perfect therapist, but as long as I care for my patients and have a good relationship with them, I know I can help them accomplish their goals and achieve a greater level of independence.  

I hope to be able to attend future conferences and continuing education classes as I advance in my career

The discussion board post below illustrates how I used occupational therapy and therapeutic use of self to empower clients while working in the acute care setting.

I brought her toothpaste, deodorant, lotion, and shampoo bottles to open.  I also instructed her to practice opening and closing her coffee creamer bottle (she would leave it open on her bedside table because she needed assistance to open it). 

Below, you can see pictures of the card board I created – which would be useful for working on cognitive tasks, fine motor control, standing tolerance, and functional reach. 

iscussion board post belo

Second rotation at Greenhouse Ministries

benefit of using humor

  The comments below from my final evaluations further illustrate my growth and confidence.

ut I worked weekends to make up for this time so that I could keep a balance and do things that were important to me

to become a better practitioner. 

I constantly sought out feedback and worked to modify my behavior and technique so that I could be the best practitioner possible.

I also told her that this was not going to be an easy process and that she had to work hard as well. 

several

came

The discussion board post below provides further information about my journal club experience. 

organization aimed at empowering women. 

her independence. 

I used an online reference to guide my treatment, to educate my client, and to prescribe a home exercise program for the client at discharge

confirmed my suspicion. 

Copies of both of the handouts I created are displayed below.

I reviewed all of these surgeries as well as the general protocols for therapy with each of these diagnoses

become certified in manual therapy because this is something that has always interested me.  I would also like to be able to continue with PAMS certification – although I did not have the chance to practice during my clinical rotations, I want to have this certification when I am employed as well. 

(see below). 

I really enjoyed learning about different apps that could be used to assist in stress management because these apps would be helpful to our clients at Greenhouse who had difficulty coping with stressors. 

, I realized that I was using the right thought process when making this decision. 

hat it would not be appropriate for me to treat MH at Greenhouse. 

Evidence of my adherence to the AOTA Code of Ethics is shown below. 

I felt like I was finally able to successfully manage the entire caseload – this certainly helped me feel well-prepared to be an entry-level occupational therapist. 

​Comments from my Midterm and Final FWPE at Vanderbilt Stallworth Rehabilitation Hospital

Below are pictures from some of the events I have attended. 

It was so rewarding to see how these women were glowing and motivated for their job interviews to come.

retrieved from the Last Call 4 Grace Facebook page)

we ever did an intervention that they did not enjoy because I could always find a new, more enjoyable way to work on the same things

partnership

I found myself scrambling to figure out the next intervention if things did not go according to plan

I created a document to help guide my evaluation

very different from evaluations in the acute care

he just preferred doing exercises during therapy. 

In the end, he was able to return home with 24-hour supervision from his wife!

goals I have created for them

I contributed to that confidence by working with her to develop interventions that directly addressed her needs and concerns. 

nervous or anxious about her return home

worked

that you 

illustrates my growth in communication

I

n this way, her meaningful occupation of crafting was used as a means and an end. 

again

evaluation

Empowers clients and team members.