Electing Your Electives

November 19, 2019
by Catherine

Classes

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about electives. While I highly recommend you take elective based on your interests and intended area of practice, it might be helpful to talk about the electives I took and my experience from them.

OT-572 Ergonomics. I always had a keen interest for ergo, not only to enhance my knowledge to make recommendations for my clients, but I found it incredibly useful in my personal life as well. This is a real hands on course, where you get to practice your ergonomic evaluation skills and also get creative. With the knowledge and skills gained from the class, I re-did all the home workstations of my family members and got rave reviews on how their pain and fatigue had improved. So it was totally worth it!

OT-578 Therapeutic Communication for the Healthcare Practitioner. I took this course because at the time, I was not confident about my interpersonal skills in practice. I was intending on doing my second level II fieldwork in either mental health or adult rehab, and I was looking for a way to get more comfortable putting my best therapeutic use of self forward. This course primarily focused on principles and the practice of motivational interviewing. While you do also get to practice other forms of therapeutic communication such as mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy, MI is really the meat of the course. At first, I felt a little awkward, because again, you get A LOT of practice using these skills on each other, but by the end of the course, I felt a lot more comfortable speaking to clients during my fieldwork!

OT-583 Lifestyle Redesign. I chose to take this course because not only was I interested in learning more about our practice methods in health and wellness, but it is one of the signature course offered here at Chan. You get a lot of insight in working with a wide variety of clients who are not only working towards wellness goals such as stress management, weight loss and chronic pain, but I loved learning about emerging evidence based practice in green wellness and corporate wellness. I used the skills I learned in this elective to complete my level II fieldwork project, investigating workplace wellness at my site.

What’s really great about the curriculum at Chan (this goes for both the OTD and MA programs) is that we have A TON of choices. You don’t have to be limited to only the courses offered by the Division but other departments as well, and there is also to option of an independent study. So if you are waitlisted for an elective that you want to take or don’t have an elective that totally speaks to your learning goals, it may be a good idea to peruse the course catalogue and also make an appointment with your mentor for more guidance.

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