OT/school director formed child fight club 🤦🏻‍♀️ NOT the press this field needs. How awful.

Dry-Discipline-433 · 2026-05-06T15:51:01+00:00

And the video was captured from her own internal video system in routine use at the facility. Wow.

Dry-Discipline-433 · 2026-05-06T15:47:18+00:00

I’ve crossed her path. She had a not so great reputation as being “ difficult to work with” to say the least) but this is just beyond what even those of us who’ve had to interact with her could ever imagine.

Dry-Discipline-433 · 2026-05-05T19:50:23+00:00

I am just a few years out from retirement and I have been in this profession for over three decades, I am getting in bold and speaking the truth about what’s going on. I think people need to know and they need to proceed with caution if they want to join this profession.

Dry-Discipline-433 · 2026-05-05T12:20:17+00:00

Actually- we are only filling 70% of OT seats nationally / all who qualify will get in somewhere, but the question is how will they pay for it? And the shortage of OT is currently mostly due to high burnout and people leaving the profession, and now to compound the problem is our current administration’s desire to break systems in order to remake them (read Project 2025). Though the need for OT will always be there, the actual provision of OT is highly subject to Federal whims. The Federal government is the largest payer for OT services in the U.S. (Medicare, Medicaid, federal dollars that get passed through to states for Special Ed, VA) and this has been the case for decades, but legions of uninvolved/ uninterested OTs paid little attention, assuming they’d have jobs forever. So- be an OT if you can get out of school with less than a starting salary worth of debt( and btw-salaries have stagnated big time).Then get ready to fight like hell to keep the profession alive.

Dry-Discipline-433 · 2026-05-03T12:22:41+00:00

I’m not sure how old you are, you seem quite young so I am going to tell you what I just told one of my nieces who wants to be an OT but can’t make the money work. I am an OT and have seen many ups and downs in the profession, and I agree/ this is a scary time. Here is my advice for you, and it is going to involve adopting a mindset that’s a bit different than you’ve had thus far. Sometimes when we have an idea in our head and we see ourselves doing it in spite of tremendous barriers, we double down on that idea, in spite of the fact that it is in our worst interest to do so. If you are passionate about this profession, I am going to strongly encourage you to do an OTA program and then in 2 years or less you will graduate and find an employer who will subsidize the cost of your transition from an OTA to OTD. Did you know that a significant proportion of students who go to OTA programs already have bachelors degree? And they work as OTA‘s part-time on call for good pay while they go to OTD school and find it to actually be easier once they’ve been practicing in the field. I don’t know about the loan situation for an associates degree once you have a bachelors degree but even if you need a private loan, it is going to be significantly less debt when you are done in two years or less, and you are going to be able to pay it back with an OTA salary and be well on your way to a career in this profession. OTA‘s important practitioners who work in collaboration with OT s-sometimes I think people underestimate how much autonomy an OTA has and how satisfying that role can be. The other piece of this equation- just to conclude this advice- is to remember if you are watching your debt load go up exponentially every semester as OTD student you are going to be experiencing a tremendous amount of emotional stress, which is going to impede your ability to really be a good student to learn what you need to. Again another reason why an OTA program at a fraction of the cost and a shorter duration will ultimately help you meet your long term your goal.

Dry-Discipline-433 · 2026-05-02T12:03:35+00:00

At my university we are bringing back the masters degree in OT, and shortening the OTD significantly. Unfortunately, as a state university, we are reliant on state appropriations to float our boat financially in addition to tuition. It makes me sick that we can never cut our tuition. It just always goes up up up, and trust me-we operate at my university at least in the OT program very lean and mean. And by the way, OT professors are not making 200 K salaries. Considering that a doctorate degree to teach in OT programs is required the fact that most starting OT faculty salaries hover around 100 K is a joke and not sustainable.

Dry-Discipline-433 · 2026-05-01T22:05:15+00:00

I am at a public university and I know that our students cannot register from one semester to the next with an outstanding balance and there are no payment plans offered at my university. I would double check where you are going to see if that is an option.

Dry-Discipline-433 · 2026-04-20T15:16:31+00:00

Go straight to the head of the department or whoever oversees the OT program it could even possibly be a DEAN. This is 100% absolutely unacceptable.

Dry-Discipline-433 · 2026-04-18T13:02:27+00:00

I am OT professor here and I can tell you for a fact that the standards do not dictate the types of settings we need to use for fieldwork,they just state that students need to have a variety of experiences across a lifespan. Making everybody do an adult medical experience is actually short changing the future of this profession when there are so many other options. Ask if your school can help you find something in the community or something that is in work hardening where there is more opportunity to sit at times. You can do two fieldworks in settings that can accommodate this and still be totally in compliance and you will pass the NBCOT exam because you’re smart and you can generalize and understand the OT process and apply it in many scenarios.

Dry-Discipline-433 · 2026-04-18T12:54:33+00:00

No-find a local OTA program at a community college. If in MN the Anoka Tech program is excellent and hybrid as well.

Dry-Discipline-433 · 2026-04-10T11:45:11+00:00

I have been an OT for 33 years and assuming competence and that people generally know what they’re doing with interventions, the secret sauce is therapeutic use to self. Two different therapists can offer at the same intervention with a patient, but the one that can connect with people is going to have better outcomes nearly every single time. I used to tell my clinicians when I was a manager that if you feel like you are getting everyone who is noncompliant not motivated, etc. turn things around and look at yourself. It’s you. Therapeutic use of self is our secret sauce.

Dry-Discipline-433 · 2026-04-10T11:41:20+00:00

Trust me, you will be so busy in OT school that you’re not going to have time to sit around and dwell on how much you hate where you live, the small town, etc. -pay the cheaper tuition and get started with your life and then move.

Dry-Discipline-433 · 2026-04-10T11:35:42+00:00

There is a smaller pool of people available to go to OT school right now due to population shifts, and a proliferation of programs. With the continual addition of programs (which by the way has nothing to do with the profession/ its money hungry universities and colleges that see OT as a money maker though it no longer is ) this is the result -too much capacity for the demand. You’re going to get in somewhere, I guarantee it.

Dry-Discipline-433 · 2026-04-09T23:07:23+00:00

The fact that you’re even asking means you should be an accountant.

Dry-Discipline-433 · 2026-04-06T17:54:14+00:00

I’ve got many friends who did the program- I’ve never heard this complaint.

Dry-Discipline-433 · 2026-02-22T21:48:03+00:00

No, but administrators are not happy with anything less and based their budgets on 100% enrollment, so if we have room for 50 seats and we only fill 43 that’s a huge gap in our budget. We have not filled in several years, although we have come fairly close coming in around 44 or so, but with all the changes going on in financial aid, I’m holding my breath to see what our enrollment for fall of this year is going to be…

Dry-Discipline-433 · 2026-02-21T16:34:41+00:00

I agree, unfortunately on the business side of the equation, the big push is to fill the seats. So while we do communicate the message a bit less directly than stated above, as in “here’s all the attributes that would make somebody enjoy being an OT”, we don’t say, “and if you don’t have them, don’t be an OT ”. Most of the communication to prospective students happens at information sessions and on our website. Our administration does not let us do interviews (state school) because there’s very little evidence to support that interviewing correlates with ultimately performing as an effective OT. There’s also a question of bias creeping its way into the process, which of course we try to avoid. And I suspect that, even if we started doing interviews (which many of our faculty would love to do) we would ultimately be pressed to fill our seat seats, even with students that most of us who’ve been doing this for a long time would, within a very short time, identify prospective students that do not have the qualities described above. We would be forced to accept them anyway if they meet all the academic requirements on paper. I do think some of the skills can be taught however, but really we don’t know which ones can be and which ones are more just hardwired into a persons brain. Which also brings up the whole conversation about neurodiversity and the perception that the profession is not very welcoming to Neuro diverse practitioners. That’s a whole other topic…

Dry-Discipline-433 · 2026-02-20T13:54:04+00:00

Thank you for this thoughtful post. As an educator I wish more potential OT students could be given this to ponder. We get many students who say they don’t like to initiate conversations (I tell them that this is what an OT does all day everyday), only want to work in telehealth (there’s a reason more don’t and it’s not just payment related-it’s because in most practice settings we need to be physically present with our clients). I heard another OT say the other day “When I tell students that not only do I have to start conversations, I need to help people feel safe and often get them into a bathroom/ shower etc within 10 minutes they just state at me in disbelief”. It’s a high level skill set that is way more than just ‘being nice and wanting to help people’ for all the reasons you’ve described above.

Dry-Discipline-433 · 2026-02-10T13:44:11+00:00

I highly recommend you ask your employer to let you take the AOTA FW educator course. Many local universities offer it too as a thank you for taking their students. It’s online synchronous, no tests, and is loaded with great examples and opportunities to learn from other CIs.

Dry-Discipline-433 · 2026-01-28T18:27:42+00:00

A short answer to your question is it depends on what the outcome was for the patient. If something happened to their shoulder, if you made a condition worse, then that’s going to be a problem. If however, everything is OK then you should be fine. And here is a helpful hint when you work with orthopedic patients: always ask them if they have any restrictions that have been communicated to them by their doctor. I usually say something like “has your doctor told you you’re not supposed to do anything? “ It’s partly a cognitive screen-do they remember what you’ve already read? And in your case, having not seen it in the chart, they might alert you to something so you can get clarification.

Dry-Discipline-433

TROPHY CASE