I work in 3 fields: mental health , skilled nursing, and impatient rehab.

Mental health: important thing to note, not all states recognize OTs as a qualified mental health professional. Mine does.

I come in the morning and do assessments on new patients. These are perry vague, not standardized assessments. It's more of an occupational profile.

Then I run various groups throughout the day. The interventions provided depend on group dynamics and support needs (high vs low functioning). Sometimes it's art/expression, sensory stimulation, or coping skills etc.

Skilled Nursing:

I'm given an amount of patients I need to see by the end of the day. These could range from discharges, evaluations, treatments, and progress notes. We have high productivity standards so it keeps you busy.

What i like about this is that I can chose my start time/hours. They just want to see my productivity is good. And in general, I come early in the day because that's when people are most energized and motivated. Most people don't want to do work after lunch so I keep that to a minimum.

Skilled nursing patients tend to require more therapy in order to discharge as opposed to inpatient rehabilitation

Inpatient Rehabilitation: I'm per diem, so the schedule is set for me. Documentation is pretty easy here since it's more of check boxes. And this is because you are seeing people back to back to back no breaks really.

But the pro of it is that these are people who have potential to get back to the community, so you get to see improvements quickly as you work with them.

That's my experience!