Future OT Megan

When I think about what kind of setting I would want to work in I immediately think about Pediatrics and early intervention.  From shadowing other OT settings, I really feel in love with the idea of helping kids develop long lasting skills to help them live the most independent life possible.  I enjoyed all aspects of Pediatrics including feeding, working with children with developmental delays, and also working with kids that have some sort of physical disability that need help learning how to do some activities of daily living on their own.  At the outpatient facility I spent a lot of time with, I really enjoyed getting to know all of the clients and seeing them improve.  It was extremely rewarding to see a child with a developmental delay finally learn how to walk, or crawl correctly.  I found myself really cheering them on and thinking about them when I left the clinic at the end of the day. I wanted them to succeed and I wanted to help get them there. ...

After listening to presentations about what was going on from the decades of 1940-2010 some specific things stood out to me.  One fact from the 1950s decade was that in 1952 there were a record number of 57,000 cases of Polio.  Because of this record number of cases, OTs were doing a lot of splinting and working with the effects of Polio on these individuals.  This stood out to me because I once had a professor that used a wheelchair and sometimes crutches after having Polio when he was younger.  It was interesting to listen to him explain how it has affected his life from when he was little to know.  However, I did not know until this presentation that there was so many cases in 1952 and it's really cool that this is when OTs started really using personalized splinting to help these individuals.  Another fact that stood out to me what how deinstitutionalization was starting to happen in 1980. When we had a guest speaker, Dr. Kiesling, he explained a litt...