Hey Laura! Good to see you here 
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@ajoelle, it is so great to see you in here!!! I agree that life is busy and we OTs need better tools to help us keep up with all of the changes happening in healthcare. We are so honored to be part of that solution for you! Plus, it is just super fun to spend time in here with so many AMAZING OTs 
Good morning! Your email this am hit home- I’m loosing my confidence as an OT x27 years last week. The Medicare changes and isolation from other OTs (lingo, developing strategies for my HH patients and loss of support in general) has really left me struggling and wondering how I can navigate my last few years as an employable OTR. I’m hoping to make connection with other like minded professionals. Also as someone who wrote their thesis on a dot matrix printer, I’m asking folks to spell out unusual acronyms- I remember the first time I saw the phrase IADLs!!
May everyone have a prosperous new year- how ever YOU measure it!
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Welcome to the Club, @micci! It is so good to have someone with your wealth of knowledge and experience!
I agree that many of the changes facing rehab right now are difficult, especially when you layer the reimbursement changes with the new evidence that is coming out.
My hope is that the Club helps you digest updates in research in bite-size chunks- and that it feels achievable, and even enjoyable, to take it all in. I’m also looking forward to you meeting the incredible home health OTs we have in here! If you haven’t found it yet, here is our sample of a home health note: https://club.otpotential.com/t/home-health-ot-eval-s-p-femur-fx/188
Hello I’m getting close to a challenging change after being in school-based practice for approximately 20 years. I’m have my Bachelors and hoping my experience working with pediatrics, especially in the school setting, will benefit me, as programs are now looking for OT’s with Masters and Doctorates. I am hoping to see the value seasoned practitioners can bring to our field and the club will help guide me and give me some great information to move forward in my OT career.
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Welcome, @donna! It is great to have school based therapist with a wealth of experience in here! Are you looking to transition settings or go back to school? One of my passions is making the transition between practices areas feel less intimidating. I’ve really been struck as we we’ve posted new documentation examples how similar the skillset required by each setting is.
Hello Everyone!
My name is Hanna Paul and I am so excited to be joining OT Potential! I graduated from UW-Milwaukee in 2016 upon the completion of my thesis assessing the impact of mindfulness on rotator cuff repair. Being someone who has lived with chronic pain for 4 years at the time, I was very passionate about looking at the mind-body connection. I worked as a contract OT for two years in SNF’s long term care in the SF Bay Area. It was there that I saw HOW FAST technology was moving and how engineers were teaming up with therapists both PT and OT to create and design programs, products and systems for empowering patients to have the best outcomes. I wanted to be a part of it and saw first hand how important it was to be involved in this world so that OT had a presence and be known that we should be considered for consultation as these programs are designed.
I stepped away from clinical practice and worked for two start up companies, one being esight (a pair of glasses for legally blind individuals that allows them to see. It’s basically a CCTV in a headset) and Karuna a Virtual Reality company looking to treat chronic pain using graded motor imagery, the visual system and patient education on the neuroscience of pain. I ran their clinical trials and got some sale experience. I knew after these jobs I didn’t want to be in the clinic anymore as I was able to have more freedom in my time, vacation as well as the products we were using WORKED! 
I began looking into going to coding school and knew I was too talkative to be a software engineer. I moved back to Milwaukee after an off for a sponsored PhD from my alma mater that I put in 9 months of work for. I quickly found myself drained and not interested in writing papers and doing the hard work. I am the person that makes you get excited about the statistic and putting it in lay people’s terms. So where did that leave me?
LOST. I knew I didn’t want to go back into clinic. I burnt myself out just after two years. I didn’t like the way the system is ran like a business rather than being centered around the patient. Being someone with chronic pain, I know first hand what its like to be billed for things that did nothing for me. So what happened next? I quit the PhD program and took two months off doing nothing. Nothing?! Well not nothing. I started to network heavily on LinkedIn and going to community events. Then one day after my 5th week of funemployment, I saw an article about this start-up in Milwaukee called Vytal Health. Vytal Health is a telemedicine company bringing functional medicine providers to our patients homes via online.
What is functional medicine? Functional medicine is getting to the root cause of the disease rather than masking it with pills and symptoms. We work with a variety of conditions including:
Thyroid, Adrenal fatigue, Fibromygaliga, Fertility, Men’s health, Women’s Health, Menopause, Peri-menopause, Gut health and SO MUCH MORE! This is what I needed 7 years ago when I was diagnosed with Fibro. All of our clinicians are trained in FM and we provide 60 minute appointments rather than your typical 15 minute session currently seen in PCP. Patients also receive in-home lab testing and personalized supplements made just for them. I am SOOOO excited to be working for this company as it is entirely about empowering the patient through guidance, proper care, time and commitment to solve and resolve patients health problems.
Check out our website at www.vytalhealth.com
I am so excited to share more about what I am doing from the OT side of things as I love having that lens as I work for this amazing company. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions (hanna@vytalhealth.com) and Happy New Years Eve to all! Check out our Instagram @yourvytalhealth for a cool practice writing a gratitude bomb!
<3 Hanna
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Wow! I had picked up pieces of your story on social, but it is so fascinating to see it all together here!
I love that you landed at Vytal Health! I just subscribed to the Instagram and emailed my sister about trying it
We have several other OTs/start-upers in here (@laura8, @Lauren5, @Lauren2) and I’m guessing they can all also testify to the crazy pace of the start up world.
I was also really interested to read about your work intersected with your own health journey. My own health is what finally pushed me to start this evidence forum. I struggled for 2 years with intense dizziness, and was SUPER LUCKY to have the skillset to find a well-research program to address my heart rate issues. Literally, the answers I was desperate for were spelled out in a journal article. (But, I don’t think even the super specialists I was seeing would have known to connect me with the program.) I think there are a lot of such “answers” for us in research that have yet to make their way into practice. Hopefully, this Club speeds the process of translating evidence into practice.
Again, thank you so much for joining, @hanna1 !! We are so lucky to have your expertise and experience in here!!
Hi @hanna1 nice to see you here! Hanna and I have been connected previously on LinkedIn and I’ve been following your journey Hanna as you’ve gotten involved in this new venture - congrats! Would love to hear more about what you’re doing at Vytal Health! If you haven’t already gotten connected on the non-clinical PT site, I’m sure @Meredith would be interested in hearing more about your journey as well. Looking forward to connecting with you on the OT Potential Club!
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Ohhhh yeah! @Meredith, I would love to a spotlight on @hanna1 as a non-clinical spotlight!! Maybe a potential feature for some much needed OT month inspiration?!
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Thanks @SarahLyon! @hanna1that’s so cool! I’ll email you!!! Congrats!
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Great to see you here @lauren2! I remember our phone call when I was looking for an SOS out of clinic and appreciated all the insights you gave me. So happy to be where I am today and that my career in OT led me here. I hope to share more about Vytal Health soon. As you know, start-up world is BUSY so keep an eye out for my post soon ! Happy New Year to you, Lauren!
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Excited for all of this ! Thanks @Meredith and @SarahLyon
Hello!
My name is Sarah Schwarz and I am a current OT2 in the OTD program at Creighton University. I am excited to be apart of the OT Potential Club and to stay up to date on new articles that are related to EBP.
Hi @sarah14!! It is so fun to have a Creighton student in here!
I’m not sure if you know this, but I am from Nebraska and plan to be at the NOTA conference next month, so if you are there be sure to introduce yourself!
We are looking forward to spending time looking at evidence with you!
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Hi! I’m an Aussie OT working also as a team leader in community disability with (predominantly) adults. I love learning and this looks like a great place to share knowledge and continue to grow as a profession to continue providing the best outcomes for our clients.
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Hi Roseanna! We definitely do our best to make this a place for curious OTs that love learning. On a personal note, it is wonderful to have a new Aussie OT in here, I know your country has been been on many of our hearts with all of the fires. Be sure to let us know if there is any way we can support you!
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Hi everyone! I JUST started my MSOT program (as in, just finished the first week of classes!) at Brenau here in Atlanta, GA. I’m so excited to be starting down this path. I’ve been in dead-end healthcare administrative type positions for about 15 years now while I try to figure out what I really wanted to do. It’s great to be back in school and actually using my brain again! I’m not sure exactly where I’ll end up, and I’m sure any ideas I might have will change over the next 3 years, but I do know that I’m very interested in animal assisted therapy and would love to work with our veteran community in some way. One of my courses this first semester is Evidence Based Practice so when I ran across this club I thought it would be a great resource to go ahead and get plugged into. I’m looking forward to staying up with current research and learning from current OTs how they incorporate this into their practice. Seeing real life instances of EBP instead of just text book examples is such a great learning tool!
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Hi @Haley! Congrats on wrapping up week one of classes! I love that you found OT through your work in healthcare admin. I’m sure that the knowledge and skills you gained in that work will not be wasted as you pursue OT, and instead will make you a more well-rounded therapist.
I also love that your program dives into evidence based practice right away! Be sure to chime in with any gems that you are learning! For many of us, OT school feels so long ago and the curriculum has changed so much, so it is really helpful for us to keep up with what is being taught it school
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Hi I am excited to join the club. I am a pediatric OT in Illinois.
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