Day 4 - Occupational Therapy

Today was interesting since I wasn't able to meet up with Katie, but I had some other awesome people to follow around. I followed Julia around in the morning and got the scoop about hand therapy. Occupational therapists tend to do a lot of hand therapy so that is a big area that I would need to study to be good at this profession. Next Julia sent me in with a physical therapist to observe a middle aged man doing strength tests for a job at Meridian. Since his job required a lot of physical work he had to reach a certain standard with all his tests. So he went on a machine and it tested his strengths of the wrist, arm, and legs. He also had to test his grip, pinch, breathing, and how many push up and sit ups he could do. He had to end up with a level four on all of his tests, and at the end he ended up with a level four. That way he could be hired for the job. One thing I didn't know was that the occupational therapists actually go out on the job site and put these levels on certain jobs. For example a welding job would be a level 4 since it requires so much motion and lifting. The highest rating is a level 5 but that is rarely used and is hard to obtain. After lunch I followed around another OT and I observed him getting a shoulder back into normal range and we also went and saw outpatients. Today I went in at 8:15 and stayed until 2:30.