Student Blog
Fieldwork

Goodbye, February! ⟩
February 26, 2013, by Paula

Externships Fieldwork School/Life Balance

So here we are, Week 7 of the semester! The Division has been buzzing with visits from AOTA Leadership visits, the AOTA Assembly of Student Delegate elections, and many exciting things coming up. This week is the week-long fieldwork experience for the first years. For the next two weeks, the second years will be out on their externship assignments. After that, we have spring break and then we are nearly to April (Occupational Therapy month) which is jam-packed with events, assignments, presentations and finally, the 2013 AOTA Conference! There are just so many things to look forward to and we all know that the time is going to fly by.

For the externship, many of the second years will be going out of the area, some are returning to the home-state while others are travelling to entirely new places. There is a group of students travelling to Ghana, another group to Costa Rica, and other students will be travelling to China, Thailand, Scotland and Canada. I will be staying in the Los Angeles area and learning more about how occupational therapy services can be better integrated into the palliative care services within an acute pediatric hematology-oncology population. I am very excited to take this opportunity to widen my scope of experience within this population and to find more ways of helping the families involved in such life-changing experiences.

Although it is a challenge, it is so important to not get ahead of yourself (balance, right??). I always take a moment to be sure to be present and appreciative of what is happening today. This has always been something that I need to work on since I tend to be a ‘planner.’ So instead of becoming stressed about “will everything in my externship turn out just as I hope it will?”, or “what will my schedule be during the two weeks away from class?”, I think back on the semester and on the year, and I just slow myself down. This year has been a year of growth for all of my peers. It is awesome to see how everyone interacts in class and in clinical scenarios now that we have gone through the practice immersions and are investigating the elective courses. It has also been amazing to see how viewpoints and career goals change. The different things which I see inspire passion within my classmates is so refreshing. Imagine if we were each interested in the exact same thing. Our practice would never grow and flourish as OT has had the opportunity to do.

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire — W. B. Yeats

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Happy OTs ⟩
February 8, 2013, by Kendra

Fieldwork What are OS/OT?

I have had the awesome opportunity to interview at a couple of incredible fieldwork sites this past week. And while these opportunities are definitely amazing and a dream, what makes me even more excited is the confidence I will have that where ever I choose to go, happy OTs will greet me when I’m there.

Did you know that OTs are some of the happiest professionals in the work place? Did you know that OT is one of the top ten degrees that pays you to play?

I love those statistics. And they are so true. When you walk into an OT clinic or OT rehab unit, you’re greeted with smiles. You see people working together with other therapists and actually ENJOYING what they do.

People this is RARE!

OT offers many, many things: job security, the feeling that you’ve helped change a life. But enjoyment? Fun? The pressure to get a good job is so high these days, you don’t often think to expect happiness throughout your career as well.

So as you make your decision about what career path you may take or whether or not choosing OT was the right choice, look at the mood of the OTs in that clinic, and when you see them laugh, smile, and share their joy, I think you’ll have the same feeling I did.

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Try, try again ⟩
February 1, 2013, by Kendra

Fieldwork What are OS/OT?

So many times when I write on this blog, I write about inspiring moments or epiphanies I’ve had about OT. And while the bulk of my time at USC has been filled with those exact experiences, sometimes I stumble. Sometimes I fail.

So in an effort to humble myself and let you readers (possible future students) know that school is about learning, I offer a teaching story for you.

Last summer I did my level II fieldwork at a sensory integration clinic. Part of my fieldwork required me to do a case study, using current research, to attempt an intervention with a child. I chose an adorable little boy with Autism, who was underweight and undernourished due to possible sensory issues, weak oral musculature, and picky eating habits. His parents were very eager for me to try something, anything to get their little boy eating again. I found several studies and had my intervention approved.

Three times a week for ten weeks I put little pieces of corn or peas or carrot into his chicken nuggets or pancakes with the hope that I was helping this boy improve his nutrition, muscle strength and preference for different foods.

It didn’t work. In fact at one point he wasn’t eating at all. By the end of my intervention we were not friends, every time he saw me he’d turn away. Meal time was NO FUN and even his social skills during group seemed to be declining.

Flash forward to my dysphagia class last night, and our professor is showing us multiple videos of feeding interventions with another little boy with very similar issues to the one I worked with this summer.

And I do not exaggerate, EVERYTHING she said to NOT DO during feeding I DID. I was humiliated, mortified, embarrassed, and laughing because I was seeing how epically my intervention had failed. There was no going around it, I bombed.

But this is the great thing about attending school and having many internships and mentorships before being released into the real world of therapy. I was never in danger of harming the boy, my actions were always supervised by a therapist, and by allowing me to fail I was still learning.

So remember, future students, that while you come to school to learn and succeed (and I know you want to be perfect) sometimes by failing you learn even more than you imagined.

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Last Session ⟩
November 30, 2012, by Ricky

Fieldwork What are OS/OT?

My last day of fieldwork was this past Wednesday. For those of you who caught my post, “First Session,” from a few weeks back, I have continued to work with the same child. Fortunately, things have become so much easier. I’m learning to adapt, on the spot, to meet the child’s unique needs and interests on the given day — always focusing on goals and functional performance, of course. Things are much less awkward, but I still get nervous and feel unprepared before each session. My fieldwork educator has been very supportive and reassures that she still feels unprepared at times. And really, things always end up going a lot better than expected. It’s only been a few weeks, but I definitely see improvement in both my client and my therapeutic self. I’m learning to appreciate that patience is a very strong/important trait for me. My client would become easily frustrated and tantrum. Keeping a cool head and providing simple cues, very calmly and soothingly, really helped me cultivate an environment of tranquility for everyone. I’m happy to report that tantrums ceased after the first few sessions and that my client has become more tolerating of certain situations. Further, now that I am more comfortable, I have become more playful — and as I become more playful, I become more comfortable (oh what a terrible vicious cycle, haha!). I’m really grateful for this experience, and especially grateful to my client and his parents for trusting me and giving me the opportunity to practice being an OT . . . and for letting me sing. 😊

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Last day of fieldwork ⟩
November 27, 2012, by Alisa

Fieldwork What are OS/OT?

I had just finished my last Level I fieldwork. The last day we bought the staff donuts, and all was good. As I reflect on my fieldwork experience, some of the highlights were helping to create a gratitude tree and helping clients and staff to reflect on what they are thankful, coordinating The Price is Right trip as a fundraiser for the organization, and helping clients create resume. There is no doubt that a resume is important; we are often judged by what’s on paper even before we get a chance at an interview. I feel that I’ve empowered my clients to believe in themselves, identify their strengths and work experience, and pretty much sell themselves on paper. Some of clients that I worked with told me: “I’m going to go home and frame the resume” and “I want ten copies of the resume, and I’m gonna post them up everywhere.” I could tell that I’ve helped them achieve a certain level of satisfaction and to be able to have a physical copy of our work gave it more meaning to them. Their hard work have amounted to something tangible, my present to them.

At first I wasn’t sure where I would fit it to the setting since there are no occupational therapists at the site, but as time passed by, I learned to be helpful and take more initiative. I didn’t mind being a generalist, helping out around the office and mingling with clients in the lounge. There’s something about hearing people stories that fascinate me. I am helping them engage in occupational storytelling, reflecting on their past and current occupations, in order to better understand and help them create a new occupational identity. Specifically to this site, clients are working toward education/employment. Occupational therapists can work with this population in order to facilitate that, and I feel that I’ve learned a lot from this site. It has made me better understand the client population, who has a diagnosis of mental health disorder and substance abuse disorder, and feel more equipped to work with them. I could see myself working in mental health. What about you? Which population do you see yourself working with?

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