Occupational Therapy
I Chose Salus
Hello! My name is Julia Starace and I’m a second-year Occupational Therapy (OT) student. I earned my undergraduate degree in Psychology from SUNY Geneseo and worked for a few years before deciding to return to school for my graduate degree. My time in a skilled nursing facility ultimately got me interested in the rehab world, and I liked the versatility of OT.
Currently, I am in my first Level 2 fieldwork. This is a 12-week long rotation where students slowly gain more independence under the supervision of their clinical instructor (CI) as they advance their skills. For this rotation, I am at an outpatient hands clinic working under an OT with her CHT credentials. I’m here to take you through the average day in my life!
5:05 a.m.: Wake up time! Usually I get up right away and start getting ready, but if I’m feeling particularly tired I may hit snooze once. Every minute counts…
6:10 a.m: Time to leave home. I have about a 35 minute commute to my fieldwork site (Coffee always with me!).
6:45 a.m.: Arrive at my site. I take a few minutes to collect my stuff and walk up. If I’m the first one there, I have to wait for someone else to arrive as I don’t have keys to the clinic door.
7:00 a.m.: My official start time. Sometimes we have a patient at this time, and other times we may not have one until 7:30/8. On this particular day, we did not have a patient scheduled this hour. We took time to chart review and prepare an action plan for the first few patients.
7:30 a.m - 12 p.m.: Treat patients! I get hot packs and perform manual on most patients. For patients I have worked with before, I’ll also do the rest of their session pretty much independently. Otherwise, I get input from my CI or we work together. For more complicated cases I observe her and ask questions.
12:00 p.m.: Lunch time! I get 30 minutes for lunch every day. If we have a department meeting we sometimes get lunch catered, which is always nice.
12:30 - 3 p.m.: Treat more patients. On average, we see 10-12 patients a day, although it seems to be getting a little busier lately. I currently see about four patients per day. This will gradually increase over time, until I am managing most to all of the caseload (again with exceptions for complicated cases).
3:45 p.m.: Arrive home. I typically take about an hour to myself to relax and just let myself decompress. After a long day of treating patients and learning, I can be pretty drained.
5 p.m.: Review my day. I’ll write down any questions that I didn’t get to ask my CI during the day and also pick a particular diagnosis/treatment method to research further. Finally, I’ll finish up any documentation and start doing some treatment planning for the following day.
7 p.m.: Dinner time! After eating, I’ll also finish up anything I have left on my treatment plans.
8:00 p.m.: I start preparing everything I will need for the following day. I like to pack lunch and pick out what I am wearing so I have everything ready in the morning. I try to take time to unwind before bed, but sometimes I still have some work.
9:30 p.m.: Bedtime! I’m someone who definitely needs my sleep, and with getting up so early I try to be in bed no later than 10. Time to do it all again the next day!
