Tani Guterman is a pediatric occupational therapist who hosts a weeknight podcast called O.T. Talk with Mr. T
As an OT [occupational therapist], my credo is to help people live life to its fullest, to help them live as independently and as functionally as possible.
OTs work in different settings, so it depends. I work with elementary school children with and without special needs. I help them with daily living activities — dressing skills, like using buttons, zippers, and snaps; eating skills, like using utensils properly and opening containers; and using classroom tools, like holding scissors properly and writing with a functional grasp. I also work with sensory needs like touch, taste, smell, hearing, seeing, body joint awareness, and the movement of your body in space. There’s more, but that’s the basic gist.
Regardless of where you work, there’s always the session, the paperwork, the evaluations, and the treatment, including consulting and correspondence. I’ll meet with students for a set amount of time a week, usually 30 minutes two or three times a week, one-on-one in the therapy room. I have to see 40 sessions a week, or eight sessions a day over five school days, so I usually end up with a caseload of 20 students, give or take.
Funny you should ask. I’ve been saying for years how this profession is dominated by women — it’s a ratio of maybe four or five to one! I go to meetings or share days and look around the room at hundreds of participants, I can literally count the males by hand. Even though being a male OT today doesn’t have as big a stigma as it used to, I think about making a program that could get more frum guys into it. Maybe the curriculum has classes for guys called FOTSM: Frum Occupational Therapy Studies for Men.
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