A Thankfully Slow Day

Our skilled unit has had a mass exodus over the weekend, leaving us with only 8 people, only 5 receiving therapy. The acute care side is busier, however, and I have learned how this pattern will end. We will go from being underbooked to dreadfully overbooked in 1-2 days, most likely at a time when I am the only OT and will get stuck doing all the evals. But, until then, I appreciate what we have now. It was a fortunate occurrence since the COTA was only working a half day, I had peds in the afternoon, and we got several evals in the course of the morning.

Mr. H went home with his daughter. He improved quickly in a short time. Hopefully, she will get him some good outpatient and driver rehab. She was a home care nurse, very good about asking questions and continuing therapy work, so I think it will go well.


My new pt. is Mrs A, who fell and sustained an L4 and pubic ramus fractures. I have a terrible time with elderly ladies with compression fractures. 1) they are in a lot of pain; 2) most of the ones I see were living independently but... 3) they have to wear a brace when out of bed and 4) have to be able to don it independently in order to live independently. For those of you who have not had a compression fracture, the braces all wrap around the torso and fasten on the sides or the front. They may need to be tightened considerably, and this is very difficult to do on yourself, especially if you have arthritis or other ailments. The usual prescribed brace is a hard or soft TLSO (turtleshell) or a corset brace. I have tried and tried teach this to different pts without success- they just can't gt the braces tight enough to be supportive. Anyone have a foolproof idea for this?

Had my annual review today- yay, they're going to keep me! ;) My supervisor loved that I had made up a list of handouts I had made, treatment tools I had made, continuing education, networking and service activities. It was a really informal bulletted list, but it made her job easier. It's an easy thing to do, and good to do as a student for your Level II placements. When I was a student, I made a sheet of pts I had evaluated, written evals or notes for, or just filled in for treatments. It also made it easier to fill out my university's form evaluation of the fieldwork site, which required you to answer caseload questions and specify diagnoses treated.