Student Blog

A New Project! ⟩
September 20, 2015, by Heather

Classes What are OS/OT?

Hey friends! I want to share with you a really awesome project that I started working on this week.

As part of my coursework in Occupation-Centered Programs for the Community, my classmate and I decided to work on a project focused on upper extremity ergonomics and proper body mechanics as it relates to one’s occupation. Through our volunteer and fieldwork experience in hand therapy clinics, we noticed that there was a lack of education regarding the importance of injury prevention and treatment of repetitive motion upper-extremity injuries. Specifically, we want to focus on creating a program that explores the prevention of repetitive motion injuries in musicians, and further investigate psychosocial factors that may contribute to the development or exacerbation of musculoskeletal disorders in the musician population.

I originally became interested in working with musicians after having an internship at the Santa Barbara Music Academy of the West’s Wellness Program. Here, I had the opportunity to work one-on-one with young musicians on how to stretch certain areas of their body and proper body mechanics for when playing their instruments. Many of the musicians were only in their early twenties and already experiencing pain in their hands, wrists, and shoulders. With education and a focus on ergonomics, musicians might be able to decrease the chances of injuring themselves or exacerbating an already existing injury. By the end of my internship, many of the musicians were already experiencing pain relief during their musical performances.

I look forward to learning more about this as I navigate the phenomenological experiences of these musicians and the health providers that treat them. Additionally, I hope to explore the possibility of spearheading an educational campaign centered around providing education for injury prevention that is specifically tailored to various areas of employment.

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So you think you want to OT . . . ⟩
September 19, 2015, by Joe

Videos What are OS/OT?

So you think you want to OT . . . but you’re still trying to decide if it’s the right fit for you.

Check out some of these great resources on getting into OT:

The Many Faces of Occupational Therapists, a video from students at the University of British Columbia.

The Most Important Things You Need To Know About Becoming an Occupational Therapy Practitioner — A free ebook by Abby Brayton-Chung of OT Cafe and Christie Kiley of Mama OT (a graduate of USC!) that addresses many common questions about the profession, such as pursuing OT as a second career, deciding whether to become an OT or an OTA, and what OTs actually do in practice!

Resources for Beginning your OT Career from the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA)

Enjoy!

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FUN with Hand FUNction! ⟩
September 17, 2015, by Ariel

Hello all! We learned some really awesome stuff in class this week, so I thought it might be neat to give you guys a taste of the ways our professors make our lessons come to life!

To give you a little background, I am currently completing my Pediatric Immersion. This means that I have six hours of lecture per week in Peds, which is accompanied by three hours of lab. I know it sounds like a lot of hours for one subject, but our enthusiastic teachers keep things fresh and exciting by incorporating hands-on (and tasty!) activities into our lectures and labs.

This week, we learned all about hand function — grasp development, fine motor control, and the ways that children experiencing difficulties with the use of their hands might benefit from strengthening exercises, compensatory strategies, and/or adaptive equipment in order to thrive.

One of the coolest things about occupational therapy is that to an outside observer, the activities we do with our pediatric patients might look just like play. But in graduate school, we’ve learned how to break down these specific activities (such as games) into their smallest components — a process called activity analysis — in order to develop our clinical reasoning skills. Ultimately, this will help us in practice when the time comes to assess our patients’ abilities, plan meaningful interventions, and understand the fundamental demands (mental, physical, environmental, and otherwise) required for a person to successfully complete any given task.

Here are some fun pictures of my classmates learning all about functional hand grasps!

For this activity, our professor brought in all kinds of yummy snacks, and then demonstrated each type of hand grasp we were learning by talking us through each position as we manipulated our food. Above are two classmates demonstrating the pincer grasp. So . . . Why is pincer grasp important? Well I’m so glad you asked! Pincer grasp employs the thumb and index finger to pick up small objects. It is a key developmental milestone that allows children the ability to feed themselves early on. Later, it is incredibly important in completing childhood tasks such as holding pencils, using utensils, and fastening things like buttons on a shirt.

For this activity, our teacher brought in tons of child-friendly games. As a group, we analyzed each to determine their age appropriateness and created descriptions of accompanying skills the game develops (such as fine motor, visual motor, or cognitive). We then connected these skills with real-life activities in which a child might need to engage throughout his or her day (e.g., dressing, writing, feeding, bathing). In the above photo, you’ll notice my classmates are playing Mr. Mouth, a game that requires participants to employ skills such as pincer grasp, scanning, attention, impulse control, and force gradation. While this might sound like a lot of fancy-schmancy words, in reality, building these fundamental skills will later allow the child to fully engage in social play, develop their impulses, and get around in their community.

If you haven’t realized by now, the way an occupational therapist can use activity analysis to deduce the therapeutic benefits of specific activities is pretty incredible!

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Hawaii Nei ⟩
September 15, 2015, by Jodie

Fieldwork What are OS/OT?

Aloha lovely readers!

As I mentioned in my first blog, this blog will be entirely devoted to my first Level II fieldwork experience in Oahu, Hawaii this past summer. During our program, students are required to complete three Level I fieldwork rotations, which are one time a week for 12 weeks throughout the semester, as well as two Level II fieldworks, which are full-time for 12 weeks in the summer. I had the amazing opportunity to complete my Level II fieldwork at Queen’s Medical Center in the heart of Honolulu. This was an acute, inpatient hospital setting where I primarily worked with adults and older adults in the orthopedic & spine unit. This fieldwork experience provided me with such an immense amount of knowledge regarding all aspects of rehabilitation within an acute inpatient hospital setting. My clinical instructor provided me with an insurmountable amount of mentorship and was the most wonderful role model during my time at Queen’s Medical Center. I left this fieldwork experience feeling much more confident in my capabilities of performing as an entry-level occupational therapy practitioner within an acute inpatient hospital setting.

Once again, here is a snapshot of my time spent in Hawaii this past summer!

Well, that wraps it up for this blog about my Level II fieldwork experience. I hope you enjoyed it! Stay tuned for my next blog. 😊

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Changing Careers for OT ⟩
September 10, 2015, by Joe

What are OS/OT?

Hello beautiful people! Sticking with the years long tradition of student ambassadors sharing their “how I found OT” stories, here goes mine.

Before finding OT, I was nearly a decade into a career in higher education, pursuing 2 additional bachelor’s degrees part-time, and highly involved with a wide variety of “meaningful activities” from mixed martial arts to dance, knitting to interactive media.

As a non-traditional student, my interest and preparation for the field were the result of a long journey of self-discovery and necessary exposure. Academically, I explored the mind-body connection through studies in language acquisition, moral philosophy, and kinesiology with practice in athletics and dance training. Professionally, my life revolved around helping people through academic advising, mentoring, coaching and teaching. Without knowing about the OT field, I inadvertently developed broad interests & knowledge in biomechanics, functional movement, mobility and nutrition, but also in psychophysiology of emotion, creative expression and learning. As a dancer and artist, I developed strong abilities in analyzing and correcting movement differences, as well as in adapting movements to suit individual challenges. In teaching dance, I focused on self-expression and creative development, which my dancers found cathartic, giving them a venue for emotional expression and leading them holistically to greater emotional stability.

As an academic advisor with USC undergraduate & graduate programs, I worked with domestic and international students, students with families, non-traditional students, and students with various mental or physical challenges, and developed skills and a passion for helping students become more self-reliant and independent by guiding them through a self-selected process of engaging in their education. For me, it was critical that each student develop their own measure of success, and adapt their pursuits towards what they personally value and find most meaningful.

Each of these professional experiences revolved around helping people, but they also felt fragmented. My full-time work as an academic advisor felt both at odds with my part-time roles as student and athlete, and divorced from my continual desire to learn and my passion for human performance. Funny enough, my work as an advisor is what first exposed me to the field of Occupational Therapy, through working with students who were interested in pursuing OT as a career. As I researched OT to better inform myself for my students, I realized that OT would allow me to perfectly synthesize my personal interests and experiences in a meaningful way.

And so far, it’s been absolutely fantastic!

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