What is it like to be an occupational therapy practitioner working in a skilled nursing facility (SNF)? We will be digging into a typical day of an OT in SNFs and discuss the pros and cons of working with older adults in this setting.
Resources From the Show:Â
New Grad OT in SNF: 6 Lessons Learned In A SNF
6 thoughts on “SNF OT: What it’s REALLY like”
Great show – I am recommending it to all of my fellow students in the OTA program at River Valley Community College in Claremont, NH.
Thanks for listening Dan! I am also always open to topic ideas if you have any that you would love to hear 🙂
I liked listening to your ideas. One thing I do is combine cognitive tasks with activity tolerance standing with my patients in SNF. I bought a pack of Famous Landmarks cards and attached magnets to them. I then typed out in large font the names of these as well as the cities, states or capitols and affix these to lines of magnets. Then I place maybe l0 of these cards on a magnetic board hung on the wall and ask them to i.d. the names and place them below the pictures. From there we go onto the cities, etc. A lot of peeps recall many of these famous places and share the places they’ve been. Before they know it they may have been standing for l0 or l5″ which they’re not always aware of since they’re kind of having ‘fun’ with identifying the pictures. It’s easy to grade up or down depending on the patient’s cognitive /physical level.
I just found out that I will be doing my first level II fieldwork in a SNF, so this podcast was super helpful for getting me prepared for what I should expect! Besides being open minded, asking questions, and reviewing relevant assessments/diagnosis, what other recommendations do you have for level II fieldwork students?
Hi Joanne
I have had 2 other podcasts on fieldwork that I think you would find super insightful.
One was with Chelsea, who had just finished up her level II fieldworks and talked about her experience and her “go-to” resources (including the Seniors Flourish Learning Lab, you can check it out here: seniorsflourish.com/learninglab, where over 55% of the members are students on their Level IIs!)
https://seniorsflourish.com/occupational-therapy-fieldwork/
The other one was Mastering Fieldwork: 7 Tips I Wish I’d Known, with my friend OT Miri. She gives some great insight as well as some great stories about how to succeed.
https://seniorsflourish.com/masteringfieldwork/
Best of luck on your fieldwork – it is such an exciting/nervous/amazing time of your OT journey!
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