welcome caroline thank you i'm very happy to be here thank you so much for joining us before we get started tell everybody out there a little bit about yourself ok so many caroline i love country music very patriotic i love being outdoors and i've never really done a show like this so looking forward to it that's ok neither have when you were just going to wing it yeah so let me ask you a question the what made you decide to go to school for occupational therapy ok so i feel like growing up and all throughout high school i had careers classes and it's like you kind of have to know right before you start college what's your major going to be and that's really scary you know being a teenager and suddenly you have to make a decision that's for the rest of your life exactly so i did a lot of job shadowing i knew i wanted to do something in the health care professions something to help people and i really never heard of o t my mom actually said you know i heard of a bunch of my friends becoming i would see as they love it it's a great field you should look into it so i did some research it sounded good so i did some field work and observation hours i went to a bunch of different facilities to see how i would like it and i just fell in love so once that happened i applied to a bunch of schools i was still undecided between physical therapy and occupational therapy  but i made this decision to stick with o c d because it's really exactly what i was looking for ok fantastic and because a lot of people don't find their calling or they don't know what it is or they try to point to jobs and so till they're in their thirty's or forty's they say oh this is what i really meant to to do when he's angry when somebody starting out and they figure out this is a exactly that's wonderful you know where did you go to school and what type of schooling was involved for you to become an occupational therapist so i went to see one university in south orange go pirates what i did was it's called a dual degree program so basically i went to school for six years but it was split into three plus three so three undergraduate years and then three graduate years so i got my bachelor's and three years instead of four and then what would have been my senior year of school with my first graduate year so you know it was kind of rough going from the undergrad life thing you're doing all these classes like sociology and kind of a mix of everything to suddenly you're going full time you're in class all day twelve hours a day sometimes between the classes and the labs and now you're full time graduate student at age eighteen nineteen you know i was the second youngest in my class so it was really scary and very intense so over the three years at seton hall you know you kind of get just a brief overview of everything you have some rehab classes some upper strata many classes some pediatric classes and then you go out into your field work and that's when you start learning and seeing what you really want to do and what the daily l main thing that we focus on is occupation and a lot of times people say oh i get patients that's like a job so you're going to help me find a job but it's really not that your occupation tenby your job but it's really anything that's important to you that you like to do or that you wanted to do so my occupation can be going to the gym or driving anything that's important to you is an occupation so the main thing with occupational therapy is when you're working with a client or a patient you want to incorporate their meaningful occupations into the treatment session right so that's what motivates the patients so if we have somebody in a rehab center who just suffered a stroke or a traumatic brain injury we're not just going to do exercises and think they'll be better we say ok what's important to you he want to be able to you know get up walk to the sink and wash your hands so let's work on that yet it's all about the function which is really the best thing because it's on the whole person your focus not just on you know their muscle strength your focus on their cognitive their minds their personalities and you really take all of that into account when you're making goals for patients and knowing them it's a huge it's a huge picture and i mean i think a very huge responsibility you're taking somebody who says ok i did have a stroke and you know we're going to talk a little bit more about that and how this all played into had is life but i you know i need to do all of these things like basically learn how to walk again and feed myself and and wash my i want to you know write a bicycle again or drive a car or all of these things and you get to take them from here to hear exactly and you get to be so creative so yeah you know if somebody says if they have a hemi predicate armor they can't really move their limb the way they used to you come up with compensatory strategies to help them ok how can this person be independent and says the goal so and all that it is a daily living whether it's eating or self care and then moving on once they're further along the route of recovery can they cook a meal for themselves safely and all these things come into play their vision and their attention and then all these things just come into play when you're coming up with treatment and it's probably never the same thing with two and never know it it's never the same i mean at one time i had a patient who the most important thing for her was she's like how my going to cook for my family she's like i don't have the strength i don't have the endurance so we went to the grocery store she bought me love and she made meatloaf as whatever treatment sessions to give her that motivation and the communists to know that she can go home and do this on her own fantastic that's amazing but going oh i know for myself i had  italy two years ago on the tenth i had a massive stroke wow yeah and how's that for you is that a long process yes it's because i have i had to learn how to do everything i robber would wow and then after i was medically stable i went over to j f k to the brain trauma unit there that's where they started with the p t and o t and it's all the b s that you take for granted it's funny because that's where i did my level two occupational therapy fielder i was on the brain trauma unit for us every day so i know exactly what your schedule is like and that's an intense program yeah you are one of the best yeah i mean you came strides and miles from being there i mean from seeing her from when it happened yes to where she was by the time she even got out of there i mean night and day and then after she got out of there  and it's so important to stay with it through all the stages of recovery yes a lot of times people just say ok i'm done with inpatient or they go home and they think that it's it's over but really you're starting to work on the higher level things that you can really challenge yourself the brain is so plastic you can just get a lot of that back now where did you first work or intern so the cool thing is that the american occupational therapy association requires you to see all these different disciplines so you really get to see a little bit of everything so i've seen pediatrics i've seen traumatic brain injury and seen long term care hand therapy and what was the mental health so i saw a little cool because i saw all the different settings and once i had our relation hand therapy i had in patient acute care and i have long term care right so i saw a little bit of everything which is a good thing a lot of people don't get that right out of school and then you kind of feel lost when you get out r like working at kessler oh it was great it was it was very similar to j f k because it was also an acute brain injury and yeah i would just love how everything was focused on the function so yeah you know teaching these people how to eat bread had a whole grasp their utensil simple things that you take for granted every day in your relearning how to do it it's amazing because i lost my right side and how is that recovery is as you can see is still very much my right leg i mean i can walk with assistance i mean you're right her right leg was really not moving for a really long time and they weren't sure that she was going to get the function back and yeah she just wasn't going to sit still so next year you know she was walking with a cane walking on her own pushing people out of the way i mean i i don't stairs now like i think but i but i because i have made some simple like cookies and suffer like that and i did i mean like a turkey chili you know you know because my therapist would ask me how would i get this from this room to that room oh no exactly so you're having fun making cookies in chile but in our minds right ok so how is she sequencing and how is your problem solving and her activity tolerance so you're having fun and that's the goal the goal is for the patient to be motivated and enjoy therapy but you're working on so many things because i mean some so much of the time i have to plan everything out right like even getting dressed thank you for taking a shower everything is planned out want to fall safe and yeah if i have yeah exactly yeah now are there special certifications or board certifications that you can take to add to your occupational therapy degree that assist you in your field and do you have any of those are you planning on getting them so the standard on after you graduate from an accredited program so after i have my diploma in hand after those long six years you have to take and national certification exam right through the national board certification of occupational therapist once you pass that exam you become a register occupational therapist but it doesn't end there because then you need to get a license through the state so you have to prove to the state that you pass this exam you're in good standing and then you get wasted in your state where are additional ones that you could do you know to become more specialized i don't have any yet because a lot of them are very intense but one that i'm looking forward to in the future is i want to get my arms certified him therapist and and i very intensive that's like a couple years down the road but yeah right now i'm working with children so i want to get my arms sensory integration certification first now what's involved in doing that as it likes to being for a couple months and sitting for like an exam or will it depend on the certification so the c h t which is the hand they're the one that's an intense one where you need to take another big certification exam even more intense than the one right out of which you have to do a project do practical stuff a time period of four days or a couple months it's a it really depends on the certification you're looking for and sometimes it involves a practice test or something to prove competency i think and not all of them are as intense but they're all different do they help you with getting paid more or getting a better job is that why people try to if you want to get in to like a certain population and you have a certification over somebody else that is definitely helpful right how did you decide that you had to get into that's the specific field of o t that you're in now so it's funny because i never thought i would work with children i always love the adults i love yammering trauma and i got very lucky because when i was at my cognition which is what i love i love all my neuro science classes so now it's like taking what i loved about brain injury enough that they have a brain injury but it's the same thing we're now kind of an issue so it's the concept that i love but i could apply it to this population right so that's just being great and it's not to say i'll be doing that forever and the great thing about o t is you could do anything with it yeah you could be in so many different practicing so and so now you're in a school you said it is so you're in a school setting so i mean this goes into hospitals and senior living facilities i mean there's occupational therapists in and in any setting you could imagine and hours at this place called the rock and we're three have in west orange and it was a lot of children who have cerebral palsy so you know their muscle tone is and is tight and you know have the best course the ability so when they're on the horse and the horse is walking and stopping it really makes the child have to right themselves and fix themselves in the operate position using all their core muscles and a lot of times their speech comes along with that if they're on a horse doing thing fun they start to talk more they're getting the horse sensory so it really covers everything it's really cool yeah i said volunteers have you ever heard of means to you know have that it's the same with they do physical therapy occupational therapy classroom so now they go to school all year round so it's not like you have off for the summers or anything like that they're in this program year round and your year in there pretty much every day but yeah so it's a ten month program there's a regular school year and in the summer it's a six week extended school year just so that they don't lose right would be with everything they've learned and yet they've come so far and a lot of these children have trouble generalizing the information and they need the repetition to gain the skills they need so it's a therapeutic program they get physical therapy occupational therapy speech therapy i do handwriting groups with them so it's all the things that they need to be the best students because as a child your first occupation a student so since i'm an occupational therapist everything that they need to do to function as a student right so i pick chairs for them to fit in if they're some kids that are a little more wiggly we give them a chair that might help them focus better and if they have weaker hands we give them pencil grips or something that all help them have a better hold so that they have better pressure so it's really a therapeutic program and i mean they do still create their it's a very specialized that's  interaction their peers how many occupational therapists for that group just you there's the only full time one there's one more who's there a couple days a week but i have all the groups and the majority of the caseload the other occupational therapist who's there says that early intervention program so it's only one of two programs in the state that had early intervention not in the home normally was in early intervention programs occupational therapist go to home and the parents kind of just sit back and watch and don't really know what's going on but at this program they're very involved because while the students are getting speech p t and o t the parents are all i have a parent support group so they're yes other parents of children with down syndrome and may get the support they need  like that finally or seeing them put out their hand and shake my hand for a parade social interaction and just a little little things really add up and make a difference that's great your turn patty was going in the future is in this field i mean the great thing is i love everything about this field so i could really see myself just picking up and going into any practice setting i hope to stay with kids  really really like working with children but i also love rehab so eventually i mean i would like to do some outpatient occupational therapy for people recovering from injuries or illnesses and i really like that outpatient how you can form a real relationship with people on their living home when you're helping them come up with creative ways to the best they can it depends only in their sure and as your life changes too you never know where i mean you know you have other opportunities you know if if you decide that you're going month to month just seeing the world and trying them nice so it's really cool that is cool yeah if someone wanted to become an occupational therapist what advice would you give them go ahead i would say it's a big decision it's a big decision to be in school you're giving up you know three four years of graduate school loans but it's so worth it the struggle during grad school you know you can't work all the time you have to give up some of your social activities but when  is because you form this relationship you know with doctors and nurses they might be in a rush to see all the patients but i was a therapist in you you're with them for an hour at a good day every day you really get to know them and get to care for you and you know the occupational therapists and really get to care for their patients that sometimes the patients families in the room when you get messy the whole dynamic and we you know then we get after family ok so what are you going to do for patty what do you come home and what's your job going to be so you really help put the puzzle together  if somebody wanted to meet needed occupational therapist how they go about getting one will doctors could refer to occupational therapy the problem is a lot it's so up and coming that a lot of people even in the medical profession don't really know much about it so that's why we're here to that's why i so doctors can absolutely write a prescription if it's for a child you don't even need a prescription to get an evaluation like at a sensory clinic or an outpatient clinic where you can just go and see if your child is a candidate and then go from there but just take the steps and you know just get informed there so many things that you can find online about o c and it's a really expanding i mean right now it's entry level master's and they're going to make it  dr entry level doctor program within the next couple years and so so i mean ask your doctor talk to your doctor if you have more questions look for a local occupational therapy group near you you know in a hospital medical facility or an outpatient facility call them say i have a little question my you know i need and my child needs it what do i do you go in for an evaluation you know i know exactly sometimes you think you know a child is acting a little quirky but they might have some type a little sensory issue that can be ironed out so quickly so get it addressed before it goes on for it's a little early right now what do you want people to know or understand about occupational therapy as we wrap up and end the show here i just want everybody to understand that we are focused on what's important to you so all of your accusations will be addressed anything when you really get to be an active member of treatment planning in o t you come into therapy you say i want to learn how to make my cookies again that's a little work on and we're making cookies but we're focusing on and strengthening and using your hands together so anything that's important to you can be brought in soc occasional therapy and that's a really really cool thing about it it's you know the occupational are the people who help people get their lives together whether good young children who need to get rid of like you said a corking s a bad habit a sensory issue something that's developing that can be stopped or it's in a situation such as paddy or somebody else who's had an injury or an illness or problem that they need to really learn exactly to get back into their life and these are the important people who can yeah yeah but how do you help yourself that's the best part yeah well you know i think it's very it's just it's wonderful and i admire you for going into a field like this it's a difficult choice it's a lot of schooling and in a lot of hard work after my death is very rewarding it is very rewarding the impact that you have on people like patty and other people's lives is just incredible so i hope that you take that with you when you let that keep yeah through the rest of the time is there any special website or any special information that people who want information occupational therapy should go to you know you go to the american occupational therapy association a lot of the information on there is for members only but there's also a lot of links just for like fact sheets for people who just want to know more about certain things i so the american occupational therapy association is agree on and for people who might want to get into the field and go to school occupational therapist and we'll be learn something about it if you need it please go get it yeah and again thank you very much for coming in educating people and