I can’t believe I’m starting my 4th week at my internship. I feel as though I’ve already learned so much about occupational therapy. I’m getting to see first-hand how what we learned in the classroom relates in real life situations. During the remaining 8 weeks I hope to learn how to better create interventions that relate to the client as an individual. I noticed that a lot of the time therapists get overwhelmed with a “rush” of clients at one time and the individualism of treatment seems to be lost. I have my own caseload and have been trying to consciously create treatments to benefit them as well as incorporate something that they enjoy doing. For example, one of my patients came in extremely weak from a recent fall and surgery. This patient in particular enjoyed sketching and painting so I decided to incorporate sketching while working on his endurance and standing balance during the session. I’ve found that the more I am able to relate to a client the more cooperative they become in a session. I think this will be an important aspect of my future career because I feel that the best health care professionals are the ones that go out of their way to make you feel like you’re the most important patient they have at that moment. As the summer progresses I hope that I can keep coming up with creative interventions as ways to help my clients and grow as a therapist.
Katie Leithauser
Occupational Therapy