Building Student Confidence: How the OTPF Enhances Fieldwork Experience

 Join host Gina as she delves into the world of occupational therapy education, focusing on the crucial role of the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework (OTPF) in student fieldwork experiences. Learn how the OTPF can empower students to navigate the transition from academia to clinical practice with confidence and competence. Gain practical insights and strategies for incorporating the OTPF into your fieldwork placements and maximizing your learning potential. Tune in for expert advice, personal anecdotes, and invaluable resources to support your journey towards becoming a successful OT or OTA practitioner.

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Transcript

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Well, we couldn't celebrate. April as occupational therapy month. If we didn't take a moment to acknowledge our OT and OTA students. And this week, I want to just take a little bit of time to talk about our students and you guessed it. How I incorporate the occupational therapy practice framework. Let's get started. Hi, welcome to animals and aquatics MJ, your host today. And I'm excited to talk about the OTPF and how I incorporate it into field work settings with students. I find that it can be really helpful in helping students bridge something that hopefully they're very familiar with from their academic setting. Into a new area of practice that is definitely novel for all of the students that I've taken. Even students who have an interest in nature based therapy aquatics, or hippotherapy definitely have a bit of a jump to make when going from an academic setting. Into a field work experience that is as diverse as ours is. So when I want to explain a little bit. Is in the academic setting. Some of, you may already know that I'm a professor in an occupational therapy assistant program. I teach the pediatric lab in the fall and in the spring I teach the psychosocial lecture and lab. And I find it important to incorporate the OTPF in both sections. When I'm working with students, I find it gives them a really good framework to start to put ideas into practice. It's a good reference point for any of the semesters that they're in. It doesn't have to be just the psychosocial semester or just the pediatric semester. They're going to use it in. Physical disabilities, geriatrics. Basically from the beginning of their occupational therapy education to the end of their occupational therapy education, this document can go with them and assist them. And one of the discussions that actually just came up this week with my current students. Is that there are about halfway a little more than halfway, maybe two thirds of the way through their program at this point. And they're really feeling like they need to be able to incorporate more occupational therapy terminology when they're describing what they're seeing in their field work settings with clients. And many of them have started to reference it. They're going to go back to the OTPF and start to read through it again, particularly the performance skills. The process skills, the client factors to help them with their terminology. They know what they're seeing now. They can make those clinical observations, but they're really having a hard time with the language to describe them. Especially when they're talking either to other clinicians or people at their field work sites. So I'm happy to see that the students are starting to incorporate the occupational therapy practice framework as a reference point that will help them build some of the skills that are really important for them as they transition from a student into a clinician. And then they know that that resource is always there for them. When I was a student, which seems like a million years ago, the OTPF was still part of our occupational therapy education. And I remember finding it really helpful as a guideline to structure my thoughts. And I think that's one of the reasons why I gravitated towards it, because it was a more structured way. To organize myself. And I knew that I was going into a nontraditional setting. My first two choices were mental health or incorporating hippotherapy. So I knew I was going into. A more nontraditional area. And I knew that I was going to need to be able to communicate with other professionals in a way that everybody would understand. I didn't want to create my own thing. That would be very difficult for other occupational therapy providers or even other therapists. Outside of the OT profession to understand. So that was the beginning of kind of my work with the OTPF. And when I got my first position and I was incorporating hippotherapy. My F one of my first tasks was like, how am I going to structure my treatment notes? I had templates that other therapists had used before me, and they didn't really resonate with me. They were. They felt to me to be a little bit too site specific and not OT specific enough. And so that was one of the first things. That I focused on was reworking. What we might think of as the traditional soap note or daily documentation record. Into something that was very OT centric. And that was really that next falling in love with the OTPF and understanding what it could bring forward for me. And as I developed myself as a clinician, and then as I moved into the role as director of therapy services, then it became important to create a field work experience for students, whether they were level one students, whether they were level two students. It's OT students, OTA students master's level doctoral level, like whatever that was going to be, that there was a structured experience. That as a clinician, especially a busy clinician, I could rely on again. And again, and again. And when I began thinking like, well, like where do I start with this? What is going to help students? Get the information that they need. That is not specific to my setting. And I thought that was really important is that. As a student we're educating generalists. They need to be able to come out and apply the information in any setting that they're going to. So just because they're having a specialty setting, fieldwork placement. I didn't want them to gain specialty skills necessarily. Of course, some students are going to go on and practice incorporating hippotherapy or nature-based or aquatics. Once they're done with their fieldwork setting, they're going to fall in love with it. They're going to know how amazing it is. But I wanted to make sure that I was contributing to the words, their overall education and towards their ability to pass the boards. And when I started to think about, okay, this is my outcome that I'm looking at. And as I looked at more and more. Schools and what their requirements were for students. I started to see how I could make that happen through the OTPF. And that was when I started to create handouts and frameworks that would take students week by week by week through their fieldwork experience. It was something that was repeatable. So I didn't have to recreate something every time I was going to have a new fieldwork student. And that was important to me. As a busy clinician, because I enjoy taking students. I enjoy what they bring to the table. But I also would find that in the weeks leading up to having a student. I would feel a sense of like panic. If I didn't have something already prepared, I wanted them to come and feel welcome and feel that I was ready for them and know that they had an important place with me as a fieldwork student and being able to create a framework that students would go through. Really gave me that ability to say like, okay, I know I have everything. The framework piece down. Once they come, I can plug them into this. It's going to help walk them through week by week of where they need to be. There's midterm qualifications, there's final qualifications. All of it is aimed at being a generalist. That's going to have the skills that they need. If this is a pediatric rotation, if this is a psychosocial rotation, I can make sure that I'm hitting those areas. And the OTPF really was the obvious choice here because. I could make small tweaks in handouts or kind of like the decision tree, if you're thinking about what is a decision tree. And so if I was going to guide them through okay, if we're starting at the top, it was field work and then it's down level one, level two. Is it an OTR or an OTA student? And then, following down from there, is it going to be an eight week rotation, 10 week, 12 week rotation? And I would be able to then craft which handouts to select. So that way they could follow through and being able to present them with a folder or a binder on the first day of their field work experiences is going to take you from the beginning of your experience with observation forms, to the end of your experience. With creating a whole intervention plan. That was something that was really nice to do it once. Set it up and then have it done. And originally it started, like I said, in a binder format now it's online. And so I just enrolled them into the online course. They have their weekly assignments that they can access online and they can get those handouts. They can refer back to the OTPF. I can have all my resource material together in one place. I can have links to a Google folder with research articles so they can incorporate some evidence-based practice and it's really become. An all encompassing resource. And when I think about including OTPF, we can look at a lot of different ways. So for the first few weeks we're working on a lot of observational skills. And we're working on creating an occupational profile. So we can use the AOT, a template for the occupational profile. I can have them select a client, either that interests them or a family that I know that's going to be open to being interviewed, to create an occupational profile. And that can be an early assignment within the first few weeks. And then my observational templates are based off of that same language and wording. From the OTPF and I can craft ones again that are more pediatric space or ones that are more psychosocial based. And they can be simple like checkoff. So we're checking off. If that process skill is used. And then a little box for a clinical observation. So generally in the first few weeks, I'd like to start with those observation. Tapes of skills, especially for a level one placement where they are going to be doing mostly observation leading into an intervention for me. So that's how I like to craft my. Level one experiences. I like them to do some observation. Show me what their clinical observations are. Then start to give me feedback on interventions that they're watching, give me their clinical reasoning on what they're seeing and why they're seeing it. And then as they're culmination project, Is that they're crafting an intervention. Plan and running a whole session and they're running it right there with me. Or Ryan, if it's in the aquatics and we can see them, work through all that problem solving piece. But. Where I'm starting from is that OTPF, I'm giving them that framework. That should be somewhat familiar to them. So even though they're in a really novel setting, they have something that's familiar to them. Now, when I'm looking at a level two student, that's going to look a little bit different because their expected end point is very, very different. So their expected end point is that they're treating my entire caseload and. I want to see definitely a different skill set from them from beginning to midterm to end point. And although there'll be completing some of those same observation during their first week and for our level twos, that's not just going to be one day for four hours on site. That's going to be with us. Throughout the whole week. I can incorporate. What they're doing with me, but I also found that I was able to have them observe other types of therapy so they could look at PT sessions. They could look at speech and language sessions and they could start to use the OTPF to look at those same clients, but through an OT lens. And it allowed them to see what was a specialty area for PT. And then what, how OT would look at that client differently. Same with speech and language. They could look at S speech therapy session, and then they. I could say. Okay. From an OTs perspective, I'm seeing these other things. So for our level two students at that very beginning phase of observation, starting to craft occupational profiles, they're doing this at a much faster rate because obviously they're there, full-time and. I want, I AI have a higher expectation, right? Because they've completed their education at this point. They're not at some middle point or beginning point for a level one student, but also I want to see them be able to come in and implement the OTPF in action. Much more quickly. So I'm going to, with my level two students, I'm going to have them start completing that occupational therapy process as it is described in the OTPF. So they're going to be creating the occupational profile, designing the assessment and evaluation phase, looking at what their outcomes are going to be. And then if you listen to last week's episode, we talked really about interventions, intervention planning from the OTPF perspective. And I'm going to have those level two students start to develop their intervention plans. So each week they're adding on new clients, they're still doing some of those same observations with. Clients that are seen in PT or speech, but now they're also starting to think about co-treating. So if they were going to be co-treating with another discipline, that could be PT. SLP or psych. What would be be bringing to the table that would be different? And again, this is where the OTPF can be really fabulous in highlighting the areas that occupational therapy differs from the other disciplines and gives my students a foundation to speak from. As they work through the intervention plan phase, and then the outcomes phase. And some students are picking up clients usually by week two, definitely by week three. And then they're adding on clients every single week while maintaining treatment plans, written treatment plans for each client. That they've already started with. So as they get to the midpoint, they are treating, you know, more than half the caseload at that point, they're getting ready to do some cocoa treats. They're looking at some education and advocacy from the OTPF and incorporating that in. And it really gives them this opportunity. To see occupational therapy in a unique setting. But with a very standardized lens and. I think from the feedback that I have gotten from students is that it allows them to understand that although we may be in a unique setting, like a pool or a barn or out in the middle of a forest, this skills that we're looking at from our client's perspective are still the same. The skills that we're using as an occupational therapy provider are still the same. And that grounding that the OTPF gives really allows students to feel confident after their field work experience. Not that it was just a unique experience that is different from maybe what their classmates got, but that it's a unique experience that is similar and is using the same skills that they would use if they had been placed in a clinic. Or a sensory gym or a school, they can then start to see how those skills would translate. And they don't so much feel like I had this really cool experience. But I don't know what to do with it. And when I talk to students who have had a level one or level two fieldwork experience with not with me, incorporating hippotherapy, but not with me at a different facility. Sometimes that's a sense that I get from them is that they really, really enjoyed it. But they struggled to connect what was happening with what they were learning in an academic setting. And, I see this from students in a lot of different settings, certainly not just my unique settings, but things like homeless shelters or drop-in centers or family education centers, or. A daycare, right? Any of those settings, students can sometimes struggle to make that leap because they're just integrating the language. And those knowledge, key knowledge concepts. They're just starting to beginning. To begin to integrate them anyway. And. Without a way to connect everything together, that book learning. You know what they're seeing in lecture, what they're being taught with, what they're seeing in the field. Sometimes that can be a really big leap to make. And I've definitely, I definitely know that when you get outside of what they expect, it's going to look like that can be even harder. And students who maybe are struggling a little bit with some of the fundamental concepts. When they come out to a really unique setting, there's a lot of things to problem solve. There is a lot of things to be taking into consideration from safety aspects to. Working in a team environment to incorporating equine movement thoughtfully or incorporating the aquatic environment thoughtfully into the client's plan of care, into addressing their goals. That is a big ask. And I have found that using the OTPF can really help students answer that. Much more. Readily much more confidently. And ultimately that's making them a better clinician when they go to their next fieldwork experience. It's not in a silo. It's something that they can apply in a number of different settings. So if you're interested in what one of these handouts looks out, looks like. Certainly reach out to me. I would love to share one of my fieldwork handouts with you, so you can see how I've incorporated the occupational therapy practice framework into the field work process. Again, this could be for a level one or level two student. And giving them that reference point to start for them has been great for the students. And it has been great for me as a clinician. Again, I don't have to reinvent the wheel. Every single time that I'm going to take on a new student. Now I mostly work with level one students due to the amount of time that I'm providing services. I am home with my kids. Part-time so I am taking, again, a lot more level one students, and it's just nice to know. I have that framework available to me. I can go ahead, get them started. And they have something to rely on. I have something to rely on. If you are taking fieldwork, setting students in your setting, I certainly encourage you to look to the OTPF for guidance. If you are going to be a fieldwork educator, it's a great way to align with educational standards. It's a great way to have a standardized way of communicating, documenting, assessing. Through the whole OT process and helping students make that connection. So when they go back to their academic setting at the end of the semester, they really have a way to connect with their peers. They have a way to understand filter and apply. On the experience that they've had with you back into their academic setting in that next step in preparing them towards sitting for their boards and becoming. An occupational therapy provider. If any of this was helpful for you today, I encourage you to go ahead. And like, or subscribe to the podcast. If you have a few extra minutes, if you could go ahead and leave us a review that would greatly help other occupational therapy providers that are interested in hypnotherapy or aquatics, find us. And I hope you have a wonderful week. We'll be meeting again next week to wrap up occupational therapy month.