This letter is to inform you about what’s been going on in the Occupational Therapy Assistant program this year. It has been an exciting year in the Penn Valley Community College OTA program. As first year students, we’ve had opportunities to go out and experience occupational therapy in real-world settings through our Level 1 Fieldwork. We have also been able to take part in state conferences through our service learning project and a switch making workshop provided by a local assistive technology organization, Coalition for Independence.

Our challenging coursework has kept us quite busy. This semester we have tackled Applied Neurology, Assistive Technology, Analysis of Physical Performance, and Pediatrics. Neurology class has given us valuable insight into our patients with CVAs, spinal cord injuries, and other neurological disorders. In our Assistive Tech lab we have learned that assistive technology is everywhere! From low-tech items such as one-handed can openers to the most high tech communication devices and switches, technology can play an important role in our job as COTAs. We are finally beginning to get the hang of manual muscle testing and goniometry in our Analysis of Physical Performance lab. I’m sure that by now our husbands and children are all pretty used to us practicing on them! Pediatrics prepared us for our first fieldwork involving children. We are wrapping up this semester with a big project in which we identify problems in a child with a specific disability and write intervention strategies for treatment.

Concepts and skills that once seemed confusing to us are becoming second nature as we wrap up our first year as OTA students. I think I can speak for all of us in the program when I say we are excited to head into our next semester in the fall. It leads us sixteen weeks closer to being sent out into the OT world full time in our Level II Fieldwork. We recently put in our preferences for our fieldwork settings and can’t wait to find out where we will be spending our last semester of the program. In the meantime, we gladly welcome the break that summer offers.

Sincerely,
Stefanie Rader, OTA student

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