Stop being the Therapy Student, and think like a Student Therapist

Wisdom from my preceptor during my midterm evaluation! (This blog post is about 3 weeks late...)

My preceptor has a way with words and this phrase is just so fitting to where I am in my professional career. The reality of being in my second last fieldwork placement and with only one school term left could not have been put in more concise terms!  But until my preceptor spoke those words, I was still very much thinking of myself as "just" a student studying occupational therapy.

Saying Less, More Often and Ask, Don't Tell

Although my placement population is considered "pediatrics" on paper, the reality is that I work with families and not just the individual child. You can teach, coach, and make all the recommendations you want with preschoolers, but chances are, the three year old has minimal understanding of what you tell them. The reality is: your recommendations aren't high on their priority list (which probably consists of: Play, play, eat, play, play, sleep). Who can blame them? So for all those who want to work with kids, keep in mind that you'll really be working with the parents and their family as much as you get to interact with the kiddies. =)

This reality hasn't deterred me from pursuing OT work with kids. It's only made me realize the skills that I need to work on in order to work more effectively with these families to really provide family-centered care.

Do I call myself a "Runner"?

Until recently, I've been hesitant to call myself a "runner". Just like I wouldn't call myself an "athlete", because I feel as though these labels require qualifications such as speed and strength. But since my first 10K, it's become apparent to me that maybe I am one of them, a "runner".

An Intervention that doesn't "work out" is an Assessment

I thought I'd start noting some tidbits of wisdom and thoughts from my placement experience. I had the intention of doing this during my last placement, but I never found the time to follow through with it. So I'm buckling down to write some of this tidbits down from this placement.

"An intervention that doesn't work out is an assessment": something wise that my current placement preceptor told me during the first two weeks of placement. I think it applies to any clinical setting and population that OTs work with, but especially applicable to children and their families. If we can see "failed" interventions as an assessment, then we will putting ourselves in a mindset that is ready to learn from our clients! Better yet, we should carry this experimental mindset with each intervention plan. If we put aside our own agendas and idealized results, there will be more possibilities available for our clients.

My First 10 K!

This morning, I ran my first 10K today with Queen's Engineers Without Borders (EWB) as part of their Run to End Poverty (R2EP) campaign.

I heard about this EWB's R2EP in September at the Orientation week sidewalk sale this year. This run came at a good time because I was looking for my next run. I had started to run as a hobby in the spring, and ran my first 5 and 8Ks this past spring and summer. Running helps me start the day off right, gives me the time and energy to think about how to tackle life's ups and downs, and destress after a long day. When I learned about EWB doing this R2EP, I thought: Why not run for a cause? Why not run to Help Others?

Same Thoughts, Four Years Later

I recently had a deja vu moment. Not just a simple flashback... perhaps more of a revelation that brought to light a particular pattern of thinking that I thought deserved some self-reflection. Here's my story:

Sibshop Saturday

Working with kids has been something I've wanted to do for the longest time. I don't know when it started. I'm the oldest child in my family but it's Definitely Not my siblings who made me want to be around kids. (No offence guys!) Anywho, I looked up some volunteer opportunities in my area that involved working with children and I was lucky enough to find one thing!

Just last weekend, I volunteered for a "Sibshop" hosted by the Children's Therapy Service in Barrie this past weekend. This was the first ever "Sibshop", a workshop for children who have siblings with developmental disabilities, that they were holding. Our crew was quite small: just me, two high school student volunteers and the woman leading the session from the Children's Therapy Service. 10 children from ages 6-10 joined us for some games and group discussion that afternoon and it was lots of fun! I was literally playing games with children for an afternoon. =)

Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others

The title of this blog post is a quote by Gautama Buddha that I really like. I've started to read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's‎ Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, and I really hope I can follow through and finish this book before classes start. I've been meaning to read this book For The Longest Time ♫! (Yes, in my mind, I sang that last bit.) Not only because the concept is so relevant to OT work, but also because Flow has always been of interest to me ever since I first heard of it in my undergrad Positive Psychology class. Recent meet ups with friends and hearing about everyone at different stages of their lives (masters student vs. recent graduate and soon to be professional with a secured position vs. traveller on contract employment vs. newly accepted Med student whose relationship will soon be long distance etc.) has gotten me to rethink, no, more like Revisit my own concept of Happiness.

Governments taking citizen's well-being seriously?!

As I procrastinate doing my own writing (letter writing, blog writing...), I've been doing some reading and stumbled upon an online magazine called Aeon.

CBT is not the answer to a "Good Life",
but having these programs accessible is a good idea!

One of the pieces, in their "Living Together" section is titled Their Good Life. Jules Evans writes about governments now providing free psychotherapy to citizens. An initiative called Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) has been launched in the UK, with hopes of training 6000 new therapists in talking therapies such as CBT! Sweden is also following their lead with a similar program.

I thought this was very much related to occupational therapy and it made me giddy with excitement on the inside. =)

I Beat Beethoven!

This post is way overdue. Studying for exams has gotten in the way of my blogging. And since I finished all my reflections for my PE lab portfolio, I needed to take a break from blogging for a while.

On June 2, 2013, I ran Kingston's Beat Beethoven run and finished 8K with a time of 42 mins and 37 seconds. My goal was to finish within 42-43 mins, so I was spot on! It felt great to finish the run, but the last ~1.5K was definitely difficult.

How do I Express Myself Creatively?

[Lab 10- May 24: Enabling Change Through Expression]

My Painted Representation of My Inner Self

Definitely one of the most enjoyable PE Labs yet! I felt like a little kid again! (The last time I said that was when our family went to Universal Studios and Disney World)

In this lab, we engaged in creating portraits of our inner self, what we think others perceive us as, and express our emotions through painting, sculpture and music respectively. When was the last time I did any of this type of personal expression??

Photography Allows Me to Express Emotions 
that I Can't Find Words For.

When I think of what I do for artistic expression, I think back to my days in the high school band. Music was my first and foremost way of expressing myself. I was part of my high school band as a flute player for 4 straight years, was also in the violin ensemble for one year and learned to play the alto saxophone so I could play in the jazz band one year. Sadly my engagement with music as a musician stopped after I auditioned for the wind ensemble in university and didn't get in.

Having the Client's Best Interests at Heart

[Lab 9- May 17: CEC- Lived experience interviews]

In our lab today, we were given the choice of 3 assessments to administer to a volunteer client at the Clinical  Education Center: Role Checklist, Interest Checklist and the Engagement in Meaningful Activities Survey (EMAS). Immediately, my past failure in administering the Interest Checklist floated into the forefront of my mind and I did not want to do the Interest Checklist. However, I ended up choosing the Interest Checklist because I wanted to, for lack of better words, "overcome my fear" of administering it. Let me take this moment to reflect on my first experience with the Interest Checklist:

How Do I Self-Regulate?

[Lab 8- May 10: Enabling Occupation Through Self-Regulation]

This lab made me ask questions that I would't intuitively ask myself. What are my sensory preferences? What are my emotional regulation strategies? Definitely Not questions I've ever asked myself and at first glance, I genuinely think that I don't know how to answer!

Throughout the lab, I thought back to that stressful situation that I blogged about in my previous reflection on the lab about Cognitive Strategies (Appying the TIC TOC Technique), I realized that I know how I self-regulate better than I thought! There are...

Role Playing a Psychoeducation Group

[Lab 7- May 3: Enabling Occupation Through Learning]

Engaging in role-playing in this lab really made me think about the emotional experiences of the parents of those who had their first incident of psychosis and/or going through their own recovery process. I think that my role as the eldest child and older sister to three siblings helped me settle into the role of "Patrick's mother". After our session, I felt oddly relaxed. The students who played the OTs in our psychoeducation group did a great job of leading and facilitating the discussion. All of our group members actively participated and volunteer to share their experiences, so the group ran very smoothly.

Can You Hear Yourself Think?

[Lab 5- April 19: Enabling occupation through coping – Lived experience exercise]

I often have my earbuds in whenever I'm walking, waiting for the bus or commuting.  Even when I'm not out and about, my room is rarely a complete silence because I enjoy working with a bit of background music. But hearing music is different from hearing voices. I'm sure that we all have a voice or two inside our heads. That inner self-talk that guides us through everything from high-stress situations to making mental lists of what to do throughout the day. Without hearing myself think, I'm sure I'd feel a bit lonely when I'm without my music on my long walks home. But I would never describe my self dialogue as disturbing or interfering with my everyday activities. My experience in this Lived Experience of Psychosis lab, showed me how difficult it really is to live with hearing a constant cacophony of voices and odd noises.

Applying the TIC TOC Technique

[Lab 6- April 26: Enabling occupation through thoughts and feelings: Cognitive approaches]

One of the cognitive strategies I learned about in today's lab was the TIC TOC technique. Let's see how it can be used to dissect a recent emotionally stressful situation of mine:

Letting Things Slide, While Not Letting the Present Slip Away...

[Lab 4- April 12: Enabling occupation through thoughts and feelings: Mindfulness and relaxation]

I found our Mindfulness and Relaxation lab very helpful because I have never taken the time to seriously give relaxation techniques or mindfulness a try. My one and only exposure to Mindfulness exercises from a Positive Psychology class had been a memorable one. I have never thought of myself as being patient enough to sit still and focus on something as subtle as my own breath. But since then, I have not tried it again. It was great to experience how relaxation techniques (both passive and progressive!) can feel and compare it to mindfulness exercises.

At One with Nature.

Lab 3- April 5: Psychoemotional health through activity

One of the readings for this lab, Vitamin Green: How viewing, being and “doing” in nature affects our health and well-being (Moll, Gewurtz & Saltmarche, 2013), reminded me of an experience in nature during my placement.

My preceptor enjoyed engaging in outdoor recreational activities with her clients, both in one-on-one and group settings. In fact, I went on a hike at Cataraqui Creek with 2 clients on my first day of placement. After telling my preceptor that winter wasn't exactly my favourite season, she said (jokingly?) that one of her goals for my placement was to convert me into a winter loving girl! Not sure if I am, but I do have a renewed appreciation for nature and the outdoors.

The JDA: More than just your job description.

[Lab 2- March 22: Cognitive-behavioural job demands analysis]

Coming out of this lab, and the role playing that was involved in our simulation of conducting the Job Demands Analysis (JDA), made me realize the complexities of the many occupations that we engage in throughout our everyday lives. The JDA brings out the implicit elements and skills that a typical job description would fail to include, bringing attention to some psycho-emotional determinants of occupation compared to a functional assessment or activity analysis. If I ever decide to use this in my future practice, I have to keep in mind that I need to be more resourceful to attain the full occupational profile of my clients. It's unfortunate that the JDA doesn't ask about how the client's different life roles impact her job performance and experience in the workplace. The stresses of her other occupations definitely plays a role in how she demanding she feels her job is at this point in her life. We're not super humans who perform each of our occupations in isolation from each other. As much as we try our best to put one hat away when we put on another, our stack of hats is usually in within our peripheral vision as we carry out certain occupations because we never know when we'll have to switch roles!

Learning how to See with Empathy

[Lab 1- March 15: Empathy and Stigma]

The theme of our First PE Lab was "Empathy" and to learn about how it can be a tool for overcoming stigma we did an activity where we made Spectacles Of and For Ourselves. As our prof pulled out the pipe cleaners, I knew what was afoot --we were going to make pipe cleaner glasses for ourselves!! And what fun we had!! =)

"PE" Lab?

I haven't taken any sort of "PE" course since high school... Nah! I mean "PE" as in Psychoemotional!

I mentioned in my last post that one of recent events that motivated me to start up this blog again was a lab course. It's the lab component of my Psychoemotional Determinants of Occupation course. We are required to make a lab portfolio that includes:

• journal-style reflections
• additional research and resources
• other material that demonstrates the application and consideration of lab content outside of lab time 
• and will be useful in future practice

The idea of a blog came up, and I knew that I had to Continue my blog!
So that's why I will be making posts in reference to my lab course. However, this blog is not turning into something that is strictly for my lab portfolio. I will continue to reflect on other ideas that are floating around in my mind and it will remain an outlet for me to think and share ideas about Life. This basically means that I should be doing More blogging. At least once a week. I night need to think about a way to organize this class based entries though...

Revisiting a Question to Myself

It's been a Long while since I last posted on this blog.
My lack of blogging doesn't mean I have stopped actively reflecting (during fieldwork placement, in life and about myself) to improve my OT lens. I've found that I've actually written a few unfinished posts throughout my placement and I just never got around to finishing my thoughts and posting them. I hope that I will find the time to do that later this weekend.

For now, I'd like to revisit the question that I had asked myself when I initially started this blog and add on other new ideas I have for the purposes of this virtual outlet of mine:
Why a Blog?

A place to think... That's what this blog should be for me.

Promises to Myself

A new year! This is usually the time of the year when I have the typical New Year’s Resolutions that include "Go to the gym more" and "Smile more" in the back of my mind. Last year, I actually wrote a list of things to keep in mind for the year (I'm pasting it directly from the post-it note on my computer desktop):

• Less Critical (and Defensive?)
• More Accepting of Criticism/Others' Opinions (open-mindedness)
• Run 2x a week (short, 5K & longer) >>10K in April/May/Summer!

I'll be honest and admit that none of these have been fully accomplished. That's not to say that I haven't become more open-minded or less critical... I like to think that I have become more open-minded and less critical/defensive, but can I say these goals were successfully achieved if I can't quantify these traits? I have yet to run that 10K, and although that goal is definitely quantifiable, it wasn't specific at all. So this year, I will make SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely) goals! Aha! Applying a concept learned in OT class to real life! XD

One of the classes that I had in my first term of OT was one called “The Learned Experience of Disability” where we learned about different types of disabilities and their respective experiences in a way that lectures and textbooks couldn't teach us. We were each paired with another OT classmate and assigned a volunteer from the local community who had a disability. This volunteer was known as our mentor, and we spent a few hours each week with them, learning about their life and experiences with a disability. From this class, I learned about more than the one disability that my mentor had, but also about the disabilities that the mentors my fellow peers had. I think many of my classmates would agree that our learning about disabilities shouldn't stop there. So I've decided to make a SMART goal to motivate myself to keep learning:

>>By the start of next year’s classes in September, I will have read at least four books on the lived experiences of four different types of disability/illnesses.

And here's one non-OT SMART goal:

>>Run the Beat Beethoven 8km run (8km within 50 minutes) in June this year.

I can do this!! ^_^