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COS Internship: Occupational Therapy Pediatric Mountain View Therapy
The Colorado Department of Education Defines "Professional" using the following descriptors:
time & work managment
career literacy
grit and resiilience
work ethic; dependable and reliable
My personal definition of professionalism:
In my opionion, professionalism is not only, having good work ethic and determination, but also the act of being kind and respectful when you are involved with others. It is important to be professional so you can show your dedication to the task at hand. For example, if you want to be more professional at school, or at an internship, you need to be able to show that you are willing to put the work in to show your dedication to the task at hand and be able to showcase the best version of yourself.
Career Q&A:
Career Q&A:
Q: What is your name and your job title?
A: My name is Janet McMillon and I am a pediatric occupational therapist.
Q: Where did you go to school?
A: I went to Tuffs University, in Massachusetts. At that time Tuffs had a program called The Boston School of Occupational Therapy, I graduated in 1983.
Q: How long have you been an occupational therapist?
A: Since 1983
Q: How long have you lived in Montrose?
A: I moved to Montrose from San Diego, California I’m 1993.
Q: What inspired you to pursue a career in Occupational Therapy?
A: I originally wanted to teach elementary art, but at the time, my High School counselor was discouraging people from going into elementary art because there were too many teachers and she suggested that I go and observe occupational therapy and so I went to a place very similar to this, in fact, and observed and fell in love with it and decided that it would probably be a good fit for me, and it has.
Q: What is your favorite part about your profession?
A: Seeing the kids, the variety. There’s so much variety in this job. Even though you’re working with a whole bunch of different kids, you’re also working with their families and so there’s definitely a people element and a phsych element. Sometimes when a parent finds out their child has a disability, they’re going through a grieving process and they can be challenging to work with. We also have other families that are somewhat challenging, for different reasons, low income, or not wanting to accept that their child has problems and so there’s that whole element that keeps it interesting in addition to all the kids. Not only are there a lot of different diagnoses, problems, but there’s a lot of different ages, my kids go all the way from 4 weeks old to 12 ½ right now.
Q: What type of tasks do you complete daily?
A: Paper work. The paperwork, it’s all electronic these days of course, and insurance companies are cracking down more and more and want you to check off certain boxes and you have to have certain things so the insurance companies will pay. So paperwork is always there, but then you play with kids. And it looks a lot like you’re playing with children, but what you do, is you asses them and look at how they may or may not be functioning as well as another child their age. And the things your playing and the toys you present are carefully chosen to help these kids progress in their ability level. So it’s very varied and you’re not usually sitting down for very long, which I like that about it too, it’s active.
Q: What type of personality is good for this job?
A: You need to be outgoing. You’re going to be spending a lot of time, not just with children, and I’m just talking from a pediatric perspective, you can also be an adult occupational therapist. But you will need to be able to articulate what you’re doing and why, to either an individual patient, if it’s an adult, but also to the parents of the children, so you need to be comfortable with that. You need to be comfortable having people watch what you’re doing. So parents will come in and they’ll sit and they’ll watch and I have learnt to just explain why I am just “playing” with their children, but if you’re not comfortable with that it can be challenging. There’s also a lot of behavioral management stuff you have to do. So, someone who can set limits with children and that’s comfortable saying “ no get off of that” is important. So I think you have to have a somewhat assertive outgoing personality.
My Future Plan & Career Statement
I will strive to be a dedicated and sympathetic Occupational Therapist who aims towards finding the best care and treatment for each individualized patient using technologically advanced resources. I will do this by attending Colorado Mesa University nest fall where I will not only start my journey of working to become and Occupational Therapist, but I will also wrestle on their Woman's Wrestling Team.
Internship Overview
Goals I Set for Myself
Treatment Techniques: learning the treatment techniques the therapists use, overall knowledge about the profession and using this experience to build contacts for future career opportunities. I wanted to learn more about the techniques that the therapists use while treating their patients because that is one of the biggest components of the job and something that I will be doing all day. One of the biggest techniques that I learned about was meaningful play. Meaningful play is used a lot in kids with autism and is the act of presenting a kid to a toy and 1, making sure they are playing with it the way that it is meant to be played with instead of them just examining the toy for a long period of time, and also making sure that the child is interacting with you, because a very apparent trait of autism in kids is the act of wanting to play all by themselves and getting ad when they have to interact with other kids. Another example of meaningful pay or using toys for a specific part of treatment would be arts and crafts. With arts and crafts, not only do the kids have to sit down and do a task for and extended period of time, but it also works on their fine motor skills, which develops tasks like writing and eating with utensils.
Professional Knowledge: I also wanted to gain knowledge on the profession of occupational therapy which is exactly what this internship allowed me to do. It gave me the chance to see what the day to day tasks consist of and allowed me to see if this would be a profession that i was actually interested in and something that i could see myself doing for a long period of time.
Building contacts: Not only was this a great opportunity to learn more about the different fields of therapy with a focus on occupational therapy, but it was also a great opportunity to build contacts for future references.
Give me some feedback!
Resume
Copy of Resume.docx
Soft-Skills I focused on:
People skills
Empathy/ kindness
Stepping out of comfort zone
Communication
Professionalism
Teamwork
My Personal Experience
My Movie.mov
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