Mary Free Bed Fieldwork

Hi all! It’s Keri for the first time on this blog. My dear husband C.J. has been keeping our blog up so far, but I wanted to give my own update on how my fieldwork is going this summer. I am already 6 weeks in to my 12 week fieldwork for occupational therapy at Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital in Grand Rapids, MI. I work in inpatient therapy, and am part of the Spinal Cord Injury Team. At Mary Free Bed, instead of each discipline being grouped together (OT, Physical Therapy, Speech Therapy, etc), the disciplines are grouped by the diagnoses they serve. The four teams are: SCI, Stroke and orthopedic injuries, Brain Injury, and Pediatrics.

I work with an OT as my clinical instructor (CI). At the beginning, I was only observing her doing therapy, but I am now up to a caseload of my own of 3 patients and that will grow to 4 soon. That is close to a full caseload because each patient sees us 2-3 times per day for ½ hour to an hour sessions. Even though they are “my” patients, I can’t charge insurance for my time with them, so my CI, Amy, is there for most of my sessions. I am slowly becoming more confident in my skills and independent in planning treatments, doing evaluations, and documenting.

Overall, I am really enjoying it! The SCI team is a ton of fun, and the hospital itself is amazing. Our therapy gym has a ½ of a car in it to practice getting in and out of cars, a simulated café and grocery store, a fully functioning apartment to practice Activities of Daily Living, and tons of other stuff to practice real life skills. We also have a pool for pool therapy. I have been so impressed with how functional the treatments are (i.e. not always making them do things like stack cones and pull beads out of theraputty, but doing things that are meaningfully and important to the patient). I am learning so much and LOVE working with the clients. I am definitely meant to work with people!

The only downside has been that I come home pretty tired most days. I love what I’m doing, but I don’t always have much leftover to give CJ when I come home! You can pray for patience for him during these 6 months of focus on my career, and for times of relaxation and enjoyment of each other in the evenings.

So, it’s going well! Sorry no pictures this time--that would break HIPPA :) Thank you all for reading our blog!