Ella's OT Student Blog

Today in class we had a guest lecturer who is a driving rehabilitation specialist. He talked to us about the various diagnoses he sees, interventions and adaptations. It was a really cool class! We broke down just a few of the many components of driving and talked about how each diagnosis can alter/impair a persons driving capability. After the lecture we tried various assessments like the MoCA and SIMARD-MD on each other and went to look at the adaptive van he brought. Listening to this guest speaker today made me realize that OT's can be very beneficial when helping to determine if someone is safe to drive. One intervention you could do would be getting a larger rear view mirror to help someone who had limited range of motion in their neck to be able to see in their blind spots. Another intervention could be going to a muscular dystrophy clinic or primary care office and offering an inservice so the staff could be more informed and know who to refer to. Overall today was a ve...

During one of the first weeks of OT school we did a glyph key drawings. This meant that if we felt one way about something then we made our head square, if we felt another way then we made our head a circle. We did this for various features until the drawing was completed. Recently we did the glyph drawing again with a year and a half of OT school experience under our belts. It was so interesting to see how our drawings changed. It was so cool to see how much I had grown though my OT school experience based on my two drawings. Most of my drawing stayed the same, but what changed was how I saw myself as a leader. Through this year and a half journey I have been pushed to be more of a leader than I thought I could be. One of the prompts was add a hat if the way you think about or approach to leadership has changed as a result of what you have learned since the beginning of OT school. For my most recent drawing I drew a hat. Since OT school my perspective of leadership has really change...

Today in class we had a guest lecturer who spoke to us about nutrition and how OT's can be more involved. Nutrition is something that my OT's don't think about. Eating and feeding are within our scope of practice, but anything else to do with calorie consumption falls under the scope of a dietician. Essentially what we learned today was that when patients are in the hospital they are not getting enough calories/nutrients and so healing takes longer. This impacts therapy because without proper nutrition, patients are unable to do what we ask of them and do not make progress towards their goals. There are several ways that an OT can provide a nutrition intervention for their client. Prior to starting OT school, I observed a feeding session at a pediatric outpatient facility. Kids blew bubbles to prepare to eat and then rolled the dice to see how many times they had to lick/smell a food and then rolled the dice again to see how many bites of a certain food they had to take b...

Presenting in front of any number of people is something I find extremely intimidating and very anxiety provoking. I do just about e verything I can to avoid talking to more than 4 people at a time. My senior year of college I took an online public speaking class to avoid speaking in public to a random group of people. As a result, I continue to struggle with presenting and unfortunately, online public speaking isn't an option in grad school. One of the topics we cover in our Leadership II class is how to best present yourself during speeches, projects or interviews. A resource we were given was titled "6 Ways to Look More Confident During a Presentation". I was intrigued. As I read the article my eyes were opened to just how much your body language impacts what you say. The article talks about how a group of people skilled in reading body language went to a tech entrepreneur competition and watched contestants body language and how it correlated to the scores they rec...