Stressors Unveiled: A Closer Look at Non-Traditional OT

 In this episode of "Animals and Aquatics in Occupational Therapy," hosts Gina and Ryan discuss the challenges faced by occupational therapists working in non-traditional settings. They address three main stressors: practice location, finding clients and marketing, and managing interventions. Gina and Ryan share their experiences and offer valuable insights and strategies for navigating these challenges, emphasizing the importance of community connections, ongoing marketing efforts, and adapting interventions to meet clients' needs. They conclude by highlighting the growth that can come from overcoming these challenges. 

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to animals and aquatics and occupational therapy. I'm Gina. And I'm Ryan. And we're here doing a dual episode tonight after completing our mini series on horses, occupational therapy and mental health. We're going to transition a little bit to focus on some broader issues that are impacting more OTs in nontraditional settings. So the three main areas that we found that are pretty universal as far as things that cause stress. And non-traditional OT would be that practice location. Making sure you have a steady stream of incoming clients. And managing interventions. Once you have those clients. Making sure that our interventions are occupation based that they're meeting the client and families goals. And that they're distinct and different from other interventions. So tonight, as we get ready to discuss this, we're going to start off with that. So one of the things that's probably Biggest challenge in working in non-traditional settings. As a private practice is setting up your own. Workspace clinic space, facility space. And that could even. Be finding the appropriate outdoor space to use. Practice location facility setup piece, because if we don't have that, we really don't have a practice. Yeah, I think the. Facility side of things. Which for us, I think we're kind of unique because we have three different settings that we use. We use. For Gina the barn for me the pool, and then both of us have used the natural environment. I E the forest. And the last one I think was kind of the easiest for us because very close in close proximity to our house. There's a perfect environment for that. There's Woods and there's streams and Hills and all of the things that we could want. From a location. So that one was, was fairly straightforward and easy for us. Where I think we've had a bit more challenge is when we have more specific environmental demands. For example in aquatic therapy. You need a pool? And I did never realize how finite of a resource. Swimming space was until I, I. Started down this road of facilitating Quantic therapy and adaptive swim. And there's a lot of different competing groups that are Looking for space to either hold swim classes or swim meets or. Private instruction. And it can really be a challenge to not only find the right space for what you need, but also a one that's open and doesn't have a schedule that is fully booked and it's. Dependable. Yeah, I think we see that with the staple locations as well. And for me, I'm at two different stable locations. One is a traditional riding, stable on the other is a path facility and they each bring their unique advantages and disadvantages with them. But scheduling is definitely part of that. And if we're providing therapy services, we need to be consistent. And being able to provide those services. So like Ryan was saying, if a pool facility is going to have a swim meet and they're going to be canceling. Or we're not going to have access to the pool on those tastes that their swim meets. That is impacting our ability. To deliver quality therapy services and. I'm hearing that amongst some of the OTs that we work with in coaching, that they've gone ahead and gone through the training for their area of practice, whether that's with aquatics or with hippotherapy and when their practice location. Changes. They don't have a backup. Location or they don't know how to go about finding a practice location and that certainly can be stressful. And as something that. We've been through and continue to go through as we'll be looking for an additional pool location. For. Having either a backup option or ability to expand. One thing that could be helpful on that is looking at some of the aquatic groups that are. More More typical aquatic group. So the swim instruction. One of the, one of the bigger swimming instruction programs here in the state. And we've, we're fortunate to be put in touch with. The owner of that organization by a mutual contact and we're working out to see how maybe we could do something mutually beneficial. So thinking along those lines, I think that if you explain to. Other people who are in that similar area. Who maybe aren't therapists, but in looking in the context of riding horses. Maybe somebody who is doing more traditional riding lessons or for me, somebody who's doing more traditional swimming lessons and you explain to them who you are and what you're doing and You might be surprised at how eager some people are to really help and how supportive they can be. Yeah. I think that community connection piece is really big. And I think that ties in well to the second area that brings a lot of OT stress and that's the finding clients and going ahead and. Finding ways to do your marketing, do your outreach, reach the families that are going to be receptive to OT in a non-traditional setting. And making sure that you have clients coming in on a continual basis. Now I know some practices end up with a waiting list and I always call it the dying list because families don't wait very long for services. I know if I was seeking therapy for one of my children right now. I wouldn't want to wait very long, even if it was something that I was really interested in. If it was going to be a long wait, I would be looking for something else, at least in the meantime, to serve my child. So thinking about the ways that once those afterschool hours fill. That you can accommodate clients or start with a group. And we've found that some of those things have worked well for us. And I think bringing it back around to that community connection piece, sometimes you can find clients. Who. We're not successful at being mainstreamed into. Some of those other instructional programs and they would be more appropriate. Either in a therapeutic setting or in an adaptive setting. Yeah. We've certainly found that in some. riding programs that we've networked with in the area. When they receive a student that has needs more than they're able to accommodate, they'll make a referral out to us and let them know that we provide occupational therapy services and we might be incorporating the horse or hippotherapy. And that way that family can still access something that they've determined as important to them. But in a more appropriate way. So we find that marketing is an ongoing. Thing. I wish I had a better word than an ongoing process. Because even if you have a full caseload, if you completely stop marketing as your clients discharged or something changes. You need to have that awareness in the community. So I always talk about active and passive marketing and, you know, figuring out what meets your personality type the best. If you're an extrovert, some of those active marketing strategies I think are really good. If you're more of an introvert type, some of the passive strategies can be really helpful, but making sure that your marketing plan is ongoing. And that helps the right clients find you, I think can definitely reduce stress in those areas. And word of mouth is something that we always ask our clients to share with their friends, share on their social networks, let others in support groups that they're in know about our services. To help get the word out. And that last area that we were talking about for areas of potential stress would be interventions. Yeah. So sometimes Sometimes I've spent a long time. Planning an intervention with a specific client and The day of. The session. Things just don't go. At all as planned and other times it's The second guessing of Is. Is the activity that, that I've planned out. Is it going to be enough? Where's it going to address the things that. I'm looking for it to address and I think a lot of this is just. Maybe this is like backend stress where. You know, it's maybe some other things that are feeding into this. And I think there's maybe some aspects of self doubt that come creeping in. I think that when we get in our own heads, that way, that. We're not. Serving our clients. We're much better served being in the moment. Having an intervention that seems like a great idea or having an activity that seems like a great idea. And then it just doesn't go the way that. You were anticipating. Uh, I find that if you can work through those things or just let it play out. There's a lot of therapeutic value in that, you know, I feel like maybe we try to control. Things that. We shouldn't try to control. And that's something that I've taken from Working in, in nature-based therapy is that there's a lot of uncontrollable factors. In the natural environment. And if I'm trying to push my own agenda. As to what I think is going to be the most helpful for the client than I may be missing the bigger picture. Yeah, I think. Looking at. Clinicians across the board. When clinicians come into a non-traditional setting. I feel like they may struggle with structuring interventions. And feeling like it's enough or. Overfilling the session with games and activities, instead of relying on what the horse can provide or what the water and the pool environment is going to provide, or what is available in nature. And. That feeling of, is it enough? Therapy is an important one because I just made this comment the other day. I showed Ryan a video on Instagram and Instagram real. And it was a nature-based session. Where the environment was set up. And so they had stepping stones and really cool play spaces and a culvert pipe to roll in. And I said, That's such an easy sell for therapy because it looks like therapy. But when you just go out into nature and you don't have things that are set up ahead of time. It can be harder with families. That is, it goes back to the marketing piece a little bit too. It can be harder with families too explain what we're doing when they don't see something that looks like therapy. And then that ties right into the intervention of. If you're scheduling and planning things that look like therapy. Part of that is to meet maybe a perceived need of what the parent is going to see or what we think the child needs as opposed to what nature's going to offer or what the horse is going to offer that day. And for so many of my clients. Having a rough idea or outline has worked really well because it leaves enough space. But. There needs to be a certain level of confidence and a certain repertoire of activities to pull from. And for newer clinicians, whether that's newer to the profession or newer to that unique area of practice. They may just not have that library of interventions kind of in their brain already. And I certainly see that that's an area that. I've been able to help support their therapist and. Is, you know, feeling okay with what they're going to plan. And then letting the rest happen. Yeah. So those were the three areas that we stress out. About at times. I think in this environment, you know, once you're outside the traditional OT, clinical OT rehab setting, there's always something to be stressed about, but it's how we handle that and how we approach it. And. We have one another for support, which is a really nice thing. We can debrief sessions together. We can. Come together and say like, Hey, I'm planning this activity. What do you think? And that's really an invaluable resource that we're able to have, you know, right on hand here. And we hope that through listening to our experiences, You'll be able to share in some of those opportunities as well. So to recap, for our episode today, we talked about some universal stressors in nontraditional settings, and we found the most common ones from other OTs would be practice location. So not only finding an appropriate practice location. But then also issues that deal with scheduling facility closures managing things that are going to happen at that particular facility or things that are outside of our control. Like water quality or water temperature, or how horses are conditioned or whether things are being mowed in your nature-based area. There's a variety of different. Stressors, so to speak in the practice location area and then finding clients or marketing to clients so that they understand. That they're going to receive occupational therapy services, which is its own challenge. Sometimes. If, if our market isn't doesn't understand what OT is anyway, and then to add something, that's a bit non-traditional to it. Definitely adds another layer of complexity and making sure that your marketing message is clear and straightforward, I think is really important. And then once we have those clients and we're super excited to have them and have a full caseload, then we begin to manage the intervention side of things. And whether that's the repetitive week, weekend, week out of designing interventions that meet the client's stated goals. Or that perceived feeling of am I doing enough? Is this. Is this a therapeutic connection based on my setting, whether that's nature based or using hippotherapy or being in the pool. All of those areas can, can be a challenge and can be addressed through, you know, some fairly kind of simple strategies that we found. And I think it's also important to remind ourselves that. On the other side of stresses growth. Stresses. Yeah, it can be uncomfortable. And, you know, uncertainty is a. It's own challenge, but. But without those experiences, without that just right. Challenge. We're not going to grow. So, yeah, I guess when we're going through it, It's it's always good to remember that. That you know, it is. Part of the process. Thanks for listening today. We hope that you found this episode. Valuable and helpful if you have, if you could leave us a review that would help other occupational therapy providers find us. And if you have any questions or would like to have any suggestions for upcoming episodes, remember we will be taking December and January off before resuming in February. So thanks for listening.