Annette Bergesen

OTA 1170
8 November 2014
Round Table Report on Fieldwork Experience
My fieldwork I experience was mainly at Jordan Valley Hospital in West Jordan at the
inpatient rehab, but I also went to the outpatient rehab, and to Jordan Valley Hospital West
Campus, formerly known as Pioneer Valley Hospital, in West Valley. The acute wing of Jordan
Valley Hospital has 62 beds, and the inpatient rehab has 10 beds. There are 3 occupational
therapy practitioners at the rehab, Aubrey Jensen, COTA/L, Laura Blevins, OTR/L, MS, and
Cheryl Woodard, OTR/L, BS who was also my supervisor. Depending on what the census is at
the different facilities for that day, Cheryl treat around 6 patients per day and they range in age
from mid-teens to late adulthood. The patients Cheryl saw were mostly diagnosed with CVA,
TBI, fractures, and shoulder surgery, and the majority of the time the biomechanical frame of
reference or the cognitive model was used.
I dont have any hospital experience and I have never been around patients with CVAs or
TBIs, so this was a new experience for me. I started my fieldwork in September so I didnt have
a lot of knowledge about the different diagnosis, but my fieldwork supervisor instructed me and
helped me to understand the different deficits that the patients had. I was able to see how Cheryl
used preparatory interventions such as heat modalities and arm bikes in preparation for more
purposeful activities.
Jordan Valley Hospital rehab has a good size rehab room where the patients are treated
both by occupational and physical therapists. Some of the interventions I saw there were mainly
biomechanical, such as arm bikes, Thera putty exercises, range of motion, and Theraband to

build upper extremity strength. I was able to assist Cheryl in helping the patients with some of
those activities and to encourage them when they thought it was too hard. Some of the patients
we saw both in the morning to work on functional ADLs, such as dressing, grooming and
transferring, and in the afternoon for range of motion and upper body strengthening activities.
At the outpatient clinic I was able to see how Cheryl worked with patients using PNF
activities and how she gradually graded the activity to make it more dynamic and a bit more
difficult. She never made it too hard so the patient would become discouraged, but just enough
to challenge and move the patient forward in the treatment. I was also able to assist in some of
those treatment sessions and it gave me a better understanding of how to interact and encourage
the patient to finish the treatment, and this also helped me to connect what I had been learning in
the classroom to the actual experience of being with a patient in a treatment session. I saw how
Cheryl administered a vision screening test for a new patient who had left hemianopsia due to a
CVA, and how she educated a patient who was being discharged from the hospital on shoulder
precautions after surgery. My fieldwork instructor often used games or cards for patients with
neurological deficits and she would often adapt them to fit the needs of the patients.
I learned so much from this experience by observing a very skilled clinician who also
gave me opportunities to interact and actually do some of the interventions with the patients.
This experience has showed me that Im in the right field, but also that I have a long way to go
before I become a skilled OTA. I realize that I need many tools in my toolbox of interventions
and adaptations, so I have started a special binder for that purpose where I have written down the
many interventions I have seen Cheryl apply in her treatments along with other ideas that I have
found. I have seen through this fieldwork experience that to be a good clinician you have to be
creative and resourceful in finding the right way to do the treatments with the patients, so that it

engages them in the activities that are important to them. That way they are much more invested
in their own recovery. I look forward to using all of the skills Im learning, as well as
incorporating therapeutic use of self, into becoming the type of clinician I want to be in the
future. From what I have experienced during this fieldwork, it seems to be a successful
combination.