Please share/ discuss something you learned from this fieldwork experience you feel will impact your practice as occupational therapist in the future.

This internship has provided the opportunity for me to learn more about pediatric interventions. I have learned many valuable tools that I can apply to other areas of occupational therapy when I am a therapist. I have expanded my interpersonal skills and improved my communication skills with children with various needs as well as with parents/guardians. I have also expanded my education and confidence to communicate the pathology, anatomy, and treatment to clients and their parents, while providing parents with strategies to work on at home or even on vacation. I have also learned creativity and flexibility are critical components to treat various patients with unique needs and individual goals. For example, some children are apprehensive of some tasks or “games” and require creative ways to treat their specific needs in another way in order to help the child gain independence and improve function. Some parents will also request to work on certain tasks and bring in items (i.e. Ipad/ laptop for communication or typing, or school uniforms) for the session they have come in for, and your treatment plan must be adapted to meet the parent’s request.

             Additionally, I have learned how to run a treatment and progress the client as I see fit, whether it is a new patient or a previous patient who I evaluated based on their goals. This helped to challenge my knowledge I have while providing me with the opportunity to adapt treatment based upon various stages of development. With various challenges presented while working with children and their parents/ guardians, I have gained confidence and communication skills to work with this population in the future, which I intend to do, and I would not have learned as much about sensory processing treatments. Overall, I have learned more about sensory processing/ sensory integration interventions, as well as other pediatric interventions for various diagnoses, and I expanded my interpersonal skills for future clients, co-workers, and health care providers. I feel more prepared to provide individuals with appropriate care and inform the parent/guardian of what I performed and why, in order to educate and help them help their child gain function for daily activities, self care, school, and social interaction.