What Do You Do When You Volunteer at a Hospital to Learn How to Become an OT?

Question by princess: What do you do when you volunteer at a hospital to learn how to become an OT?
I plan to become an occupational therapist when i get older. But I am 15 years old right now. I was wondering what kinds of things do they let you do at the hospital when your volunteering to become an OT.

Best answer:

Answer by jannsody
You would most likely do non-patient related tasks such as helping out on the nurse’s unit making patient beds, filling water pitchers, taking lab or other slips to various departments in the hospital or such. Observing (or job shadowing) is what the OT department may allow a student volunteer to do such as observing some treatment sessions with patients. There are strict regulations for OTs (and PTs and SLPs/speech-language pathologists) so that a volunteer would not be permitted to work directly with those receiving therapy.

Please also realize that the OT field may be both mentally and physically draining, and that it seems as though a lot of jobs are in nursing home/long-term care facilities working with patients (“residents” in a nursing home since most “reside” there) that have had a stroke (“brain attack”) which is a type of brain injury, have had an amputated limb, hip fracture (break), shoulder/hip/knee replacement, those with dementia (cognitive/thought process decline) or such. Before taking the prereq (college) courses for OT, how about observing in the various areas of practice including patients with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Spinal Cord Injury/paralysis at a physical rehabilitation center, psychiatric hospital, nursing home, pediatric hospital, outpatient clinic or such.

For general career information: http://www.bls.gov/oco and can search.

This site has accredited programs in OT (and most are at least at the master’s degree level): http://www.aota.org

For possible volunteer opportunities: http://www.volunteermatch.org

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h/p/cosmos locomotion running-machine workshop schliersee – In the h/p/cosmos workshop July 22+23, 2010 in Schliersee, Germany 2 therapists from University of Munich demonstrating sophisticated methodology in manual locomotion therapy. This is an example for treatment of stroke patients, hemiplegic and spastic patients as well as orthopedic patients.