The coldest winter I ever spent
Archive for March 2018
When watching this, I first thought, “Yes, yes, yes. I understand. Get past the ‘life is hard, long, and boring’ part. What I need are answers. He talks about it, which is nice. It’s not a simple, easy answer, but yes, it’s simple and easy, and ultimately totally right-on.
An OT student asked if going into school-based OT advisable straight out of school, saying “a couple people have warned against this because it requires a certain level of autonomy as a new practitioner…” Here is my answer:
I’m in my 6th month of working school-based, straight out of school. To survive, you certainly need to have some supports. I had school-based fieldwork, I chat often with a close family member who works in special education, and I’m working part-time. I still yearn for more supports. There are a lot of moving parts… a wide array of pediatric conditions, parents, assessments, reports, the variable school environment, multiple campuses, IEP meetings, never enough time in a day or resources. Be prepared to not be prepared. That said, it can be done if you have the supports. If I didn’t have my supports, it would not have worked.
At the end of my SNF fieldwork, I felt like I almost had it down. At the end of my school-based fieldwork. I didn’t feel nearly as competent, partially because of the particular experience I had (ask me about it privately) and partially because the job is more faceted.
What is a reasonable workload for a school-based occupational therapist? What percentage of time should a school-based occupational therapist be seeing clients vs performing other duties?
There are few guidelines or rules to answer these questions. That makes it especially difficult for a new occupational therapist who is working in a district on his own (like me). Here are some thoughts and datapoints for you on the subject:
From the AOTA Workforce Survey (I think the data is from 2014), “How OT Practitioners Spend Their Time in Different Settings”
The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction created a guideline document in 2016. I found it here. You can find a local archive of it here: Workload-document-and-formulas.2016. This creates a formula to determine workloads for occupational therapists and speech-language pathologists.
Another useful source is the OTSalary.com site. It is billed as “The only open source OT salary survey designed by and for OT practitioners. Knowledge is power.”
I really enjoyed the research portion of my occupational therapy master’s degree. I’m now a member of researchgate.net but I can’t figure out what it’s good for! Any thoughts?