Hello! I am new to the OT field but have about 10 years of experience as a nurse. I find that I am really struggling to switch to OT because of lack of mentorship and I’m wondering if this is normal and I need to gut it out until I feel confident?
In nursing, when I started a new position, I would always have a few weeks of 1:1 guidance to talk me through new terminology/expectations. In the pediatric job I’m in now, I had a week of shadowing and then given a half strength case load and then a few weeks later I’m now doing a full caseload. Recently though I’ve been feeling really overwhelmed because there is so much I need to re-familiarize myself with (it was only touched on in school) and I don’t know how to balance that as well as give good therapy. For example, I have a few kiddos who would benefit from sensory processing specific interventions but I’m also struggling with where to even start with learning/developing these strategies.
Oh @rebecca78! You are NOT alone! It’s not just you.
As you are pointing out, we practice in so many settings- that are only touched on in school. Then when you get into each setting, there is so much complexity to our caseloads. It makes it hard to get oriented! (I honestly created this whole site because of these exact feelings!)
Thinking of this problem big picture, I am working hard to create clinical decision support pages for each diagnosis, to give us all a centralized starting point for quickly reviewing best practices.
But, honestly I probably haven’t gotten yet to the conditions that would be helpful for you.
So in the meantime, I recommend these two older podcasts, both of which will give you a big picture overarching approach to pediatric therapy best practices.
I’m also tagging @alyson3 because she runs a clinic and sees what onboarding entails. I’m also tagging @alana1 she is a fellow new grad, who is a little ahead of you in the process of getting oriented.
I think overtime you will come to appreciate the complexity and richness of our field. But, I know it’s a lot to get oriented to. You can do it!
