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

I have learned more about the political/insurance loops we have to jump through to provide service.  In my opinion it is affecting the people it should be helping.  I understand there needs to be guidelines but at the same time it hinders our abilities as therapist's.  We are the professionals that go into this field, how can insurance or government control what is right and wrong to do.  We the professionals should have that control.  We are the ones that are educated in this specialty.  It is our job to care for and practice ethical habits to always protect the people that need our help.  In a big hospital setting I have seen it at its worse.  We ship out patients based on "target dates" that the insurance or government mandate.  Sure some make it out earlier than those times which is great because they are doing well enough to be self sufficient in their rehab moving forward.  But I have seen to many people that had potential be shipped out to a SNF because the hospital cant keep them any longer if they expect to be reimbursed for the services.  But shipping people to a SNF when even though the gains may be slow they are making measurable gains. This an injustice to the patient.   To leave a place they are improving with 3 hours of therapy a day to go to a place that only supplies maybe an hour a day will not be beneficial for that patient.  So it has been a very eye opening experience how the insurance and billing is spearhead guidelines instead of our therapy.