Student Blog

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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OT in the HOUSE ⟩
November 14, 2019, by Noelle

Housing and Transportation Living in LA Videos

Warning: time lapsed commute may cause motion sickness. 😬 Skip to 2:00 for just the apartment.

I want everyone to know that I made this on iMovie ON MY PHONE and I am not the most tech savvy so bear with me. 😊

I originally wanted the background music to double as my song recommendation (”Home” by Dan Croll), but alas, couldn’t make it happen. The background music is “Extra Jolly” by Mark Mothersbaugh.

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We don’t want tricks; we just want treats! ⟩
November 13, 2019, by Japeth

International Living in LA

As someone from the other side of the world, I haven’t had a legit Halloween experience. So when my cohort asked if we were down for some trick or treating, we immediately said yes! Everyone was just so excited because it was something that’s new to most of us.

Last Halloween, we had two celebrations: the first one was during our Quantitative class and the second one was when we went to Pasadena to do trick or treats. Dr. Myka Persson organized a potluck lunch for the MA1 cohort. We brought our food to share to everyone and Dr. Myka baked Halloween pumpkin cookies using their own family recipe! It was really delicious . . . like I ate 4 of it. I love how our professors at USC Chan practice occupational balance.

Now this is the part that I always look forward when blogging – sharing with you all the pictures!

Until our next adventure, Fight On!

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My First Level 2 Fieldwork (#TBT?) ⟩
November 7, 2019, by Kaho

Fieldwork

I know it’s November and summer feels like ages ago, but with wish-lists for the Summer 2020 level 2 fieldwork about to open up to 1st and 2nd year students, I wanted to reflect and share with you about my fieldwork experience from last summer.

For 12 weeks, I was in an inpatient acute care setting in a hospital in San Diego. As you’d imagine, it was very fast paced, challenging, exciting, etc. and I. Loved. It. Every day looked different and I was constantly learning new things. My clinical instructor (CI) has been an OT for tens of years and working at that specific hospital for over 5 years, but she mentioned that she still learns something new every day. Because the hospital didn’t have a large OT team, the OTs didn’t have an assigned area or floor. The patients in the entire hospital were distributed among the OTs randomly and equally, so I got to see everything from a person with cancer to a patient in neurology to a person with a new hip or a new knee. I was all over the floors, including the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). It was definitely overwhelming at first with so many things to keep in mind and be aware of, and I was nervous to touch anything because it is a setting where careless mistakes could be unforgiving. Also, my level 1 fieldwork was in hand therapy, so this was my first time performing transfers on real patients. However, my CI was amazing at gradually increasing my responsibility and easing me into the bustling hospital halls. She talked me through every treatment session and constantly provided me feedback on my performance. Despite my doubts, I was independently evaluating, treating, and documenting patients by the end of the summer.

My days started at 7:00am and ended at 3:30pm. The first hour of my day consisted of looking up patients’ medical history, condition, precautions, and anything else that was relevant. I was usually up on the floors by 8:00am. I saw about 6-9 patients each day with my CI, depending on how many of them were evaluations since those take longer than regular treatment sessions. In the inpatient acute care setting, your schedule revolves around the patients’ schedules, so documentation occurred during gaps when none of my patients were available or at the end of the day.

One of my favorite things about working in the hospital was that there were many opportunities for collaboration across health care professions. I got to talk to and sometimes treat with physical therapists (PTs), speech language pathologists (SLPs), nurses, and even medical doctors (MDs). We would all bounce ideas off of each other to come up with a holistic treatment plan for each unique patient. With collaboration came opportunities for advocacy, as well. I can’t tell you how many times other health professionals and patients referred to me as PT during my fieldwork experience. Patients would say to me, “What, I just had PT. Why are you back?” or “Why are you taking me to the bathroom? I thought you were going to take me walking down the hallways.” Notes from the nurses or MDs would state things like, “Patient walked to bathroom with PT today.” It was frustrating, but it was a great opportunity for me to practice promoting OT and sharing my elevator speech about what OT is and why we’re great. 😊

Another exciting aspect of having fieldwork in acute care was watching surgeries. I got to watch four surgeries over the summer: a total hip replacement, a total knee replacement, spine surgery, and a deep brain stimulation. It was an incredible learning experience and it deepened my understanding of what surgical patients go through and how much pain they may be experiencing afterwards. It made seeing the patients’ joys of taking their first shower after surgery or being able to get to the edge of their bed and sit without support that much more meaningful.

Whether this is your first level 2 fieldwork or your second, consider the inpatient acute care setting at any hospital if all or any of this sounds intriguing to you. I had a very positive experience and I highly recommend it!

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Making Peace with my Commute ⟩
November 6, 2019, by Kevin

Housing and Transportation Life Hacks Living in LA

Growing up in a small town, the longest “commute” you have is around twenty minutes to go across town. Generally, people enjoyed driving and on Sunday I would go on a drive along the lake with my dad to relax and enjoy the open roads. Parking was plentiful and free. People used their car horns only for emergencies or to give friends a quick “hello” as they passed by. For much of my life, driving was a preferred occupation and something I looked forward to as part of my day. Soon after moving to Los Angeles, that all changed and driving quickly became one of my most stressful and unenjoyable occupations. My shortest commute is around twenty minutes, roads are rarely open, parking is sparse and expensive, and car horns are a little less friendly. What once was one of my most enjoyable thirty minute daily occupation was now my least enjoyable two hour daily inconvenience.

Quickly, I realized that I had taken on this pessimistic attitude toward driving and it was impacting me negatively. After coming to this realization, I chose to reframe my attitude toward my commute and find ways to make the time more enjoyable and relaxing. My first discovery on my quest to making my commute enjoyable was podcasts! Listening to podcasts and audiobooks brought back much of my enjoyment for the drive itself. Within a few weeks, I was hooked on several podcasts including Stuff You Should Know, Modern Love, and Ted Talks Daily. I now looked forward to a long drive because it gave me time to listen to a great story or learn something new.

Along with listening to podcasts, I made some other changes to my driving routine to create a more relaxing experience. First, I started using the app Waze to estimate my drive time for the next day and I would automatically add thirty minutes to all of my trips. This additional thirty minutes allowed me to relax when I encountered unexpected traffic, time to find parking, and take the slow lanes where I tend to find more friendly drivers. Next, I started walking or riding my longboard places that were close to my apartment and I found that I would usually get to my destination faster than if I had taken my car. Lastly, I began to pay more attention to the routes I took each day so I could take my eyes away from my phone’s GPS system. Knowing my daily route gave me the opportunity to relax because I was no longer concerned with missing a turn or getting lost. 

Making these changes has brought back my enjoyment of driving and reduced the stress in my life. Recently, I even started going on Sunday drives again down the coast and it feels just like when I would drive along the lake with my dad. Moving to a big city came with a lot of change, but I am happy to say that I have made peace with my commute.

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