Experienced Pediatric Occupational Therapist Interview – Day in the Life Video Series #4

Stacia is an energetic OT who has been practicing for 33 years and she has worked with over 1000 children through the years. She loves using her dogs (mastiffs) to help support her therapy services. This was one of my favorite interviews so far! Listen in to my pediatric occupational therapist interview.

She started off in the school system but disliked the isolation of school-based OT. Stacia moved to a teaching hospital setting instead working on many different pediatric floors expanding her skill set. Following that she started with pediatric outpatient therapy.

Adding professional development all along the way, Stacia expanded to working with children who had learning disabilities. She learned at that time when having a more sedentary job, that she too had ADHD which helps her see things from a different perspective. We discuss the benefits she found with ADHD meds and how she likes to determine whether medication is beneficial.

Stacia decided to open her own practice which was “eye-opening”. Getting parents to pay their bills was her biggest struggle and she had to close her practice.

“As therapists we are trained to help, we are not bill collectors. If I ever had another practice I would have a separate business manager for billing.” – Stacia, OT

Moving to the school system for a life style change with retirement benefits and paid time off was a tough transition to get back into an educational model versus the medical model. Eight years later in the schools, Stacia can still sometimes feel like a new therapist because she is always learning about the educational model.

She has started a collaborative approach with the teachers to serve her students and has seen amazing progress in her students. They use a rubric to determine how much time a student receives services. Stacia is always educating others on collaborative goals – there are no stand-alone goals. Their goals must state “to support the ability to access the curriculum”.

“I have never seen a pencil grip fix a grasp. I have seen kids lose pencil grips, use them as flying objects… I have seen that when working on different strategies to improve a pencil grasp that has been successful.”

When asked if any certain professional development helped significantly, she realized that she uses so much of what she has learned all together to help students. She is not planning on retiring for a long time because she loves what she does!