From Clinician to Trailblazer: Growth in Unique OT settings

 In this episode of "Animals and Aquatics," hosts Ryan and Gina explore the concept of growth in non-traditional occupational therapy (OT) practices. They use the analogy of a tree to illustrate the stages of development from a clinician's roots in traditional OT to branching out into non-traditional settings. The hosts emphasize the importance of strong foundational knowledge in OT theory and interventions before embarking on non-traditional paths. They discuss the gradual expansion of practice, starting small, and finding ways to incorporate unique practice elements, all while recognizing the cyclical nature of growth in these settings. Overall, this episode offers insights into the journey of growth for OTs interested in animals and aquatics in OT practice.

Transcript

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Hello, and welcome to animals and aquatics. I'm your cohost Ryan. And I'm Gina. And today we're going to talk a little bit about an analogy that we had to describe a non-conventional. Occupational therapy or any type of therapy practice, really? Because we're seeing. More PTs and SLPs entering into. Specifically nature-based. Practices. And. Gina and I were talking and we're. Discussing about. How a non-conventional practices. Set up using the analogy of a tree and. We're discussing it. And we were talking about, well, the roots, maybe the roots are. Like your business with them, we were thinking. And, nobody. Decides I'm going to get into business. And what do I want to do? I'm going to become a therapist. So. If you're like us, you. Became. Therapist's first and then decided for one reason or another to branch out. And maybe going a different direction. Well, in our last episode, we were talking about. Stressors. And how stress can bring us to growth. It's, after going through. Challenges that we find we grow the most and thinking about how therapists grow into a non-traditional setting or what brings them to. And some of these niches and animal assisted therapy or aquatics. And figuring that. That aspect of growth from our practitioner. Maybe right out of school, maybe they've had that interest to actually working with clients in that area of practice. There's quite a number of steps of growth. And that's where that tree analogy really kind of came to us and thinking about, well, Yeah, those, those first steps, that the roots there of being the clinician is kind of where it all begins. Yeah, so. I know for me that. Even while I was in school, I. Had in, I think at the front of my mind, I was thinking that I was going to work in a conventional setting and. I actually initially wanted to I envisioned myself working in geriatrics or potentially with veterans because I'm a veteran myself. And I ended up working in pediatrics with you. Yeah But I remember going through school and. We had to. Run interventions with our classmates. And I still remember running an outdoor intervention. Taking my classmates out of the classroom. And. Into a grassy and wooded area that was outside. And I remember the looks on their faces and how excited everyone was to be getting up and getting out of the classroom for a little bit. And we kind of felt like little kids again, and it. Ignited something in me that was still sticks to this day and is a big part of why. I'm so. Passionate about. The different types of. Settings that we use. I wouldn't say the different types of therapy but. Working in the settings that we do. Because they are so different. And. You know, I could make connections with things. That I'm personally passionate about and things that helped me out as a child. And looking at ways to maybe help kids do some of those things that they wouldn't otherwise be able to do. I've had a couple of clients I've taken fly fishing. I've. In aquatics I've used kayaking for to work on things like reciprocal Upper extremity movements and balance and postural stability. And and to me, that's just, it's a lot more interesting and meaningful then, working on a stability ball or. Some of the things that, that I think you would see in a more traditional setting. When I would say. From what I see with the occupational therapy assistant students that I work with. That. That initial interest and these non-traditional settings. Every year, I have students who complete a project on aquatic therapy or on animal assisted therapy. And a few brave students, occasionally attempt a project on hippotherapy. But not too many dudes, knowing that that's kind of my specialty area. There's only a few brave students who attempt to do a project on that area, but a lot of our students come to the profession with an interest in working with animals, incorporating them into their sessions, or they find the aquatic therapy really interesting. And I've been trying to. Reach out to other educators and talk to more clinicians to find out. What happens along the way? If you have that initial interest or passion. And don't end up working or incorporating that into your practice later on. And I think it's been really interesting to to follow, from our roots, when there is an interest and a passion, we're becoming a clinician, we're getting the education and. I think we need to be really grounded and our OT. Roots. To be a good clinician in a non-traditional setting. I think having a really good. Grounding in occupational therapy theory and interventions is so important before we step outside of the box. And into our non-traditional areas, because then, it's adding a whole nother layer of practice to that. So I think that that initial. Strong roots is really important in our clinical foundations to begin with. Yeah. And I think the other. End of that is. That, that passion that you have in those roots, the there's the educational route, but we're also talking about the. What kind of lights a fire in you? And for me it wasn't being inside of a building, working with an any client from any population. And I would say that if you don't have that. Passion or you don't have that fire that those roots are going to dry up because especially when you get into the realm of starting up your own business and. You know, doing everything. It can be taxing. And so if you don't have those strong roots that are reinforcing why it is, you're doing what you're doing, it's very easy to lose sight of that. And. And you're not going to grow much. And I think part of that foundation then is then your specialized training. If you're going to be an OT, that's incorporating hippotherapy, you're taking the American hippotherapy association. Foundation treatment principles courses. If you are. Going into an area of nature-based therapy or animal assisted therapy. You're getting other supports. As you're reaching out. So that way you have mentors to call on you have resources that way you feel supported as you're stepping into that area of growth. And really we grow from those foundations and then we need to put some sort of structure together. And that's what we like into sort of the trunk of the tree, or, you know, as a sapling is starting to grow. It starts out fairly small and that might just be taking a class of students outside. Right. That might be kind of the, the sapling of your nature-based adventure or, bringing a therapy animal into your clinic one day a week. That might be the beginning of animal assisted therapy for you. And then gradually as that grows, you might be growing that out to a situation like we are where this is our full-time practice. Yeah. So I think there's ways that you can. Start to incorporate Outdoor activities, even in a more traditional setting. One of my field work placements was at a sensory gym and there was A couple of clients with visual motor challenges. And there was I noticed that the. Inside the box, it was all straight lines. And there wasn't a lot of variation so we can find that a lot of clinicians start out small and. That's a great way to get those first steps in the direction of the area or the niche that you're really excited about. So it might be volunteering at a center working with another OT who's incorporating hippotherapy in their practice. It might be taking some kids outside at a sensory gym. So that way we can work on some visual motor and visual scanning skills in the natural environment, it might be incorporating a trip to the pool from the school. You know, once during the semester. So that way you can see how your students react to the aquatic environment, but you're not necessarily jumping in with both feet, so to speak. And until you really feel like you have a trunk to support you, you have all the foundation systems in place and. The more I see from clinicians who are getting started. Is that decision of, when do you start implementing more systems in place? When do you bring in an EMR to help you manage the clients? When do you. Add in the email system, like when do you start to fortify or build out that trunk as you grow? So, from just that kind of experimenting with it, but you're still maybe within your traditional job setting. And then gradually you're starting to branch out. You're bringing maybe more clients into that non-traditional setting and you find that you're spending more time outside with clients than you are inside the clinic. And you know that you're going to go in the direction of a non-traditional practice. That doesn't always mean becoming a private practice owner. It might be an employee at a nature-based practice or at a center that's incorporating hippotherapy or at a rehab center that does have a pool and does aquatic therapy as part of it. And those are all steps along the path of growth. And as we get further along that path of growth, we do have to make decisions about. How far are we going to go? Following our passion, like how much of our practice is that going to be as it, is it going to be. Two nights a week after a school-based therapy job, are we going to eventually look to make this our full-time gig? And when we hear from, OT students. A lot of them that's their eventual longterm goal is that it can be their full-time practice. And I, I certainly have said this before and I'll say it again. I don't feel like school. prepares us as clinicians very well for making that happen. It prepares us pretty well for fitting inside the mold. Have a rehab center or a school, but it doesn't prepare us very well for following our own trail to what we believe occupational therapy can be. And. That means really building in those systems. So our trunk can withstand some of the stressors that we talked about in the last episode. And. Starting to put those things in place really is a step-by-step process. It's not something that has to be laid down all at once. If we think about the rings of a tree trunk. They're not all laid down at once. They're laid down one at a time and each season. Changes, some seasons there's a lot of growth and some seasons there's much less growth. Yeah. And we've definitely seen that where. Ebb and flow where it's like. Things will seem like they're going really good. And then it slows down a little bit and then it picks back up even more than it was before. And. So it really can be a rollercoaster ride, which is, why. Mentioned before about having those strong roots and having your passion as part of that root system with your clinical knowledge. And. When we get our systems in place and we really start to see that growth. And again, it can be somewhat cyclical or seasonal. Since again, we are talking about nature based therapy, animal assisted therapy and aquatics. There, there is a seasonality component to it. If your pool happens to be an outdoor pool, right. And you live anywhere that isn't the endless summer of Florida. E there's a seasonality to your aquatic services. There's a seasonality to. What working at the stable is like, and there's a seasonality to nature based therapy and feeling that ebb and flow and change, is something that we kind of plan for in our growth patterns. And now that we've been doing it for longer, we're starting to be able to see the patterns. And see those seasons come and go and know when to kind of plan for growth. And no one, we need to get our marketing materials out. So that way we're, we're going to be reaching out to families when they're ready for signups, or when they're thinking ahead to the next season. And by doing that by really sinking up. Our patterns of growth with our own local community. That's when we get to see really the fruit of our labor and for us, that's being able to serve clients in our community to work in settings that we're really passionate about. To be able to customize our practice that suits both our professional and personal life. And. Chase the things that interest us. I think that's. Probably encompassed in what you said, but. I don't think that that can be under sold. I think right now, if you talk to. To a lot of OTs, whether they've been in the field 20 years or they've been in the field for three years, burnout is a huge issue and productivity demands, or having a caseload of 65. The school. Students is really tough. It's really tough on us as clinicians we want to see things blossom and if your caseload is ginormous or your productivity standards are so high, that you can't provide care that you think is the quality that you've been trained in our passionate to do that, that is it's really frustrating. And. It's hard to hear clinicians who've been around for a long time who are leaving the profession for those reasons. But it also makes us reflect on the growth that we've had and being able to customize and tailor our sessions and the way we put our practice together. To minimize our own risks of burnout and maximize our interest in the profession. And as we've kind of alluded to it at before, That sometimes, our continuing education budget can get a little stretched and, you know, as we find things that we're really excited about, but that is growth. And that's what this episode is really all about is growth from those teeny tiny beginnings of our roots as a student, to getting that initial training that we need to grow those roots really strong. Two stretching up as a sapling and getting some initial experiences out there too. The seasonality of growth as we build a really strong trunk to branch out, maybe on our own to seeing the fruits of those labors with our clients. With our community and with ourselves as growing practitioners. As business owners and being able to kind of bring that around and help other OTs navigate that path as well. So I hope that brings a little bit of clarity as far as how we look at. What we do and why we do what we do. And. How we view. Our practice. So, if you've enjoyed this episode today, we hope that you will go ahead and share it with another occupational therapist who maybe could benefit from some of the growth strategies that we talked about today. And thanks for listening.