My Future Career

I realized a while back that I have nothing really blog-worthy occurring right now... so I guess I will just elaborate on my adventures shadowing occupational therapy (abbreviated as OT from now on) at Mercy Hospital in St. Louis.

For some background information, the OT program at Mizzou requires applicants to complete 30 hours of shadowing. I previously tried to shadow during the school year at Truman Veterans' Hospital, but due to my busy schedule during the school year, my only free time was on Friday afternoons. Let me say this... the OT department is extremely, extremely slow at the Veterans' Hospital on Friday afternoons so I only completed 3 hours of shadowing. Hence, I am trying to get as many hours as possible this summer. Currently I have 24.5 hours. I shadow on Mondays and Wednesdays from 9:00-4:00, 7 hours each day. Although Mizzou's program only requires 30 hours, I want to get more hours in order to strengthen my application... anyways, enough technicalities.. onto what I actually observe!

First, the therapist performs initial therapy evaluations in the morning, meaning she visits different patients for a basic diagnosis which includes doing exercises to determine arm/hand and leg/feet strength and functionality. The exercises are simple stretches to just see how well the patient can (or at times can't) use certain muscles. Then, after the diagnosis, the therapist types up the notes in the computer so the physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals can view them. Then, the therapist begins the actual OT sessions with other patients. The therapy isn't very labor-intensive for the therapist considering how the exercises are basic arm/leg lifts and bends, hand squeezes, etc., in a set of 10-15 each. However, for many of the patients, the therapy is extremely difficult, and there are even patients who refuse it. Aside from testing physical movement, the OT also checks for how much assistance is needed to perform general lifestyle activities such as grooming (can the patient use his/her arms to brush hair, etc.), dressing (is the patient able to put on his/her own socks, etc.), and other similar things.

So far the majority of the patients I have seen are elderly and often need assistance getting in and out of bed, standing, sitting, etc. Also, since each patient room has a bed and a chair, the therapist sometimes tries to get the patient out of bed to sit in the chair for a little bit to reduce the chances of getting weaker (staying in bed causes the patient to be weaker obviously). I know sitting up in bed probably sounds really easy, but for some of these patients, it's amazing to witness how challenging it is for them.

Although I have enjoyed shadowing OT with more elderly patients, I think at this moment I'll prefer to work in a pediatric clinic in the future. I am glad I am shadowing this summer because now I have a much better understanding of OT. =)