Hello, everyone.

Welcome to episode number three of Beyond Barriers, Navigating Health and Function, a podcast developed and produced by the Society of Alberta Occupational Therapists.

I am your host, Pam Hung, and we are talking to occupational therapists that work with clients in different practice areas to learn more about the many ways that OTs promote engagement and participation in everyday life activities.

Today, we will be speaking with Logan McColl, an occupational therapist working in private practice, Who specializes in the area of mental health in Edmonton, Alberta.

Today, we will dive into what brought him to his area of OT practice, how he has supported clients to participate in everyday life activities, and how OTs are unique health professionals in the area of mental health.

Let's get started.

Welcome, Logan.

Please tell us a bit about your practice area and what drew you to work in this area of mental health.

Of course, yeah, thanks for having me.

So I'm an occupational therapist, of course, and I specialize in mental health, and I've been doing that work for the last 10 years.

I started working at 14 as a ski instructor, and so for a long time in my life, I was coaching sports, and then I did construction work to get through school, so there was always these functional aspects in what I was doing with work.

But going back to skiing and teaching climbing There's a lot of overcoming fears.

There's a lot of sports performance and mental aspects to that.

And so I think that really lended me to start working with people dealing with mental health concerns, mental illness, and even just everyday, normal life stress and how that affects both our bodies and our minds.

can you tell me a bit about what sort of challenges the clients you work with face with their everyday living activities similar, to what OTs in any practice area do?

I work with clients from all backgrounds and all ages and all settings.

So I might work with an adolescent.

He's dealing with some school or home challenges, participating in the classroom and their homework assignments or even in their household chores, what their responsibilities are, maybe as a developing child.

I work with adults who are maybe going, through the pursuit of their professional career.

Whether that's, going through their university or any academic training they might be doing, into their entry level career positions where they're starting to be in their profession.

And it's a steep learning curve still to older adults who are working towards retirement or dealing with the accumulation of injuries in their life.

So everybody deals with things or experiences things very differently.

And how their health issues may impact their function is totally unique.

for example, a lot of the professional clients that I work with may be having trouble with stress, anxiety, and that turns into difficulties managing their workload, difficulties staying organized on a day to day basis, relationship turbulence with their partners or their friends or their colleagues.

as a mental health OT, we take into account the internal experiences of what a person is going through, how that may impact their function, and we're able to target both of those dimensions.

Functionally with strategies and solutions and outside the box thinking.

Internally with some of the more psychological processes, dealing with, the mind and the body.

Okay.

so when you, it sounds like you really work with adults and, adolescents.

pretty much almost all the way across her lifespan, essentially, which is really interesting.

so what do you think, or what are some of those strategies that you use as an occupational therapist on a day to day basis when you're working with people that experiences challenges with their daily life?

I recognize it's probably different, obviously different depending on the client that you're working on, but what are some examples of that you might do?

For sure.

So I'll break that into the ideas of internal and external.

external is, in my mind, the traditional OT approaches.

We're thinking about their environment.

How can we modify the environment so that they are more effective in engaging or participating with the task?

so for example, the clutter around the desk, making it harder to focus, can we tidy that up?

developing a daily routine or a plan.

So a lot of that may come back to behaviour activation strategies, how we're going to facilitate a person to engage in something.

and if they're dealing with something that's very scary to them or very challenging to them, how do we break that task down?

How do we make it a little bit more bite sized and manageable so that they can fully participate and be successful?

Because I specialize in mental health, A lot of my practice does emphasize those internal techniques and strategies.

So for the mind, we are often thinking about the range of interventions that have to do with cognitive reframing or how we just think about things.

Looking at things from different perspectives, creating understandings of how our minds work really helps free people up to maybe find more effective ways to look at situations rather than ways that might feed into their stress or their challenge.

How we think affects how we feel.

That's a pretty core principle in most therapeutic work.

But there's also the bottom up approaches of body to brain.

How we feel is going to affect how I think and how I function.

So we also teach those body regulation strategies.

How do we deal with pain?

How do we deal with the hyperarousal symptoms of stress and anxiety, or the hypoarousal systems of depression.

managing our nervous system and the ups and downs of how our nervous system works, both in the body and the mind, is a cornerstone of my own practice.

And that's something that I've developed over the last decade of my work by taking advanced trainings and all these different kinds of mental health therapy approaches, from cognitive behavioral therapy to dialectical behavior therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy.

to even emotion focused family therapy.

There's a very broad range of different techniques and approaches that all integrate quite well, I find.

Yeah, and even just looking at that, being able to look at those internal aspects, but also the external aspects of people's environment is that really highlights that.

holistic nature of occupational therapy in and of itself, in any practice area, which is great.

so when you talk about.

Behaviour Activation Therapy or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

What are some examples of strategies that you might teach people to, be able to help manage some of those thoughts and feelings that come up for them in different situations?

So this all ties for me into a lot of neuroscience.

So I'll speak to that question, about how I might help someone specifically with that approach in mind.

So one of the core skills is the ability to turn the mind.

We're using our brain's ability for metacognition to observe and notice how I'm actually thinking.

And then being able to recognize, are those thoughts helping me?

Are they effective or are they hindering me in some way?

And if they're hindering me, am I able to look at the thing differently?

Can I turn the mind to another idea?

And that might be even refocusing the mind instead of stewing on the problem and dwelling on it.

Can I redirect my focus to even something more benign?

Maybe I just need to distract myself for a little bit and get out of my head.

Bottom up, dealing with the body to brain connection, we often teach self soothing skills.

So how can I slow my nervous system down as simple as taking a deep breath?

And of course, there is a lot more complexity to breath work than just taking a deep breath.

Other techniques might be like muscle relaxation, understanding how to clench and then release.

And through that, sending a release signal from the body to the brain.

so there's lots of different techniques out there.

Turn the mind and self soothing are really impactful techniques because they work within our nervous system.

And by regulating our nervous system, we're better able to engage in our surroundings and our activities.

Okay.

Yeah.

And something like that is relevant for probably a wide variety of clients And, skills and strategies they can use in a variety of situations, which is really great.

so I guess, given what you've said already and, the different things that you do with your clients, how do you feel your role as an OT in mental health contributes to your client's health and well being?

Okay.

so because as an occupational therapist, we're looking at both the internal of a person and the external of their life, how they're engaging and participating, we're taking this holistic lens.

And when we facilitate health, we know that there is a big impact on function.

Healthy people tend to function better.

And we know that is a reciprocating relationship.

When we're functioning well, we tend to be healthier.

I'm able to do these things that take care of me, that help me have peace of mind and a healthy body, whether that's strong or flexible or endurance, whatever that means to the person.

so by working in both of these domains, the internal and the external, health.

What's going on in the organism of my being human and external, my roles, my responsibilities, my relationships.

I think we're creating the conditions that really allow people to thrive and get the most out of their life.

Yeah, and even looking at, those activities that are really meaningful to them that really help them thrive, right?

that can be really supportive.

I mentioned in your introduction, you work in private practice, and so I know it, sometimes private practice can look like, maybe working with other types of health professionals, maybe working a little bit more as a sole practitioner with clients.

What does that look like for you in your own practice?

So my practice is very broad because I've been doing private now for eight years in my 10 years of being an occupational therapist.

So I work in both domains.

I have individual clients who just come to see me and they just want to work with me.

There may be other.

people involved, but I'm not interacting with them.

At the end of the day, it's up to that client's consent.

Now, if I'm working with a client and I'm seeing some concerns, I may encourage them to go see a physiotherapist or maybe connect with a psychologist as well.

Or maybe they need to talk to their doctor and get their meds reviewed.

Um, and sometimes I may even ask, you know, would it be helpful for me to chat?

with that clinician.

so when we move from a sole proprietor or individual provider type of care model into either kind of the transdisciplinary or multidisciplinary where we're connecting and collaborating more, I think that is extremely important for people dealing with more complex concerns or higher needs.

The other side of our practice, of course, is very collaborative where we accept referrals for rehabilitation services.

dealing with mental health and function concerns.

And in those cases, whether it's a veteran or an injured worker, or someone who's been on long term disability, maybe for a very long time.

in those cases, we very much try to connect with the other providers in their care.

To ensure that there is good communication and continuity of their long term or big picture goals, So that we're all working on the same page.

Certainly most of the clients that we receive from, our referral partners often have a psychologist involved.

And we're coming in as mental health OTs, so it's very common that we are very collaborative and have a lot of communication with a psychologist who might be involved on a case, particularly when there might be risk issues, whether that's serious addiction concerns, risk to self injury or suicide risk, or any kind of homicide risk that might be.

Well,

yeah, you mentioned psychologists.

So how do you see, I guess I'm just thinking about this in the sense of kind of role overlap with mental health, occupational therapy and psychology, how do you see those roles as different?

Or how do you see your role as different than maybe a psychologist?

psychologists are generally going to be more focused on the internal, and of course, good psychologists are trained in cognitive behavior therapy or behaviorism approaches, but often, you get a lot more of the psychodynamic or psychoanalytic approaches where it's a lot more drawn out and methodical and slow, but not necessarily as strategic when it comes to the function.

So again, as an OT, I think what we're doing is we're bridging that.

two parts of the human experience, the internal, what's going on in my mind and body, how am I feeling, how am I thinking, and the external, what am I actually doing in my day to day life that's moving me towards where I want to go.

OTs are really well equipped for the latter part, where we're very focused on function in a lot of our training.

We do focus on mental health, of course.

We work with all kinds of people and all kinds of issues.

But in order to really be able to address that internal, We do need more training.

And so when we take trainings with my team and myself, we're some of the OTs in the room, where the vast majority of trainees.

Or maybe psychologists and social workers still.

So we're able to integrate those models in our practice, deliver them in a way that works for our clients functionally so that they can apply the skills and strategies in their life.

And through that, I think people manifest more of their own success rather than maybe being able to explain what a client needs to do, but not having that full skill set of, here's how you're going to apply this.

In how you live your life and how you function day to day.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

really focusing on that function piece.

we talked about, a little bit about some of the other healthcare practitioners or healthcare providers that you work with.

Do you ever work with, caregivers?

whether that's caregivers of the clients that you work with or, people that are maybe in that kind of a caregiving role

Yes.

we often do end up working with caregivers, particularly for minors.

Of course, if there's any adolescents in care, we have to work with the guardians, their parents, whoever that is, regarding consent and the degree of involvement of the caregiver.

is often negotiated between the child and the parents, right?

So some parents are willing to give their youth a lot of independence, and some parents want a lot more involvement.

And so it's up to us as the therapist to navigate that family relationship.

Now for adults, it's up to the client whether they want me to be involved with any of their other professionals that might be helping them or caregivers in their life.

We have to get informed consent to make any disclosures or receive any information about health pertaining to the individual or the client.

So there's a lot of variability in that.

Now, Some of the referral sources, expect that we do that collaboration and communication.

So we still have to get the consent, At the end of the day, it comes down to a lot of trust.

it's variable to the person.

Sometimes when they first meet me, they don't know me.

They don't want me talking to their doctor or their parent or, whoever.

And of course, if it's a parent, I'm still going to have to talk to them.

but as the alliance or as the trust builds, Okay, now I think you're in my corner.

Yes, please have that conversation with whoever it may be.

so it's really up to the client, right?

I'm not here to direct people to do any particular thing that they don't want to do.

private practice, we're really are serving the client, more than the system.

Yeah, of course.

And it really does always really come down to that relationship with our clients and whether we can, support them to either make changes or integrate something new into their daily routines.

so switching gears a little bit, what, what are some of the challenges that you faced as an OT working in either mental health or working in private practice?

thankfully, I started my career in young adult psychiatry, inpatient adult, inpatient work with adults.

and then I moved into a family program for high needs youth and families within the Edmonton zone, meaning severe self harm risk.

And so I've been very fortunate in my career.

I've always joined startup programs and I was able to carve the niche of my OT role within that team.

So I was able to very much gear it towards mental health.

And I've always been very well supported by my colleagues, whether that's psychology, psychiatry, nursing, social work, everybody's been extremely supportive of my involvement in my efforts.

In private practice, I went into it for the last eight years now with a lot of that confidence and that support.

and so the collaboration has come very easily.

And I think that's also evident in all the additional training that I do in mental health.

So I have the language.

I can talk to a psychologist using their own language about what a client might be going through.

And that creates more trust in, oh, this guy knows what he's doing.

Um, so thankfully, yeah, it's been a very smooth ride.

Of course, the challenges of private practice for an OOT are more about recognition of the discipline, particularly in a mental health scope.

We're one of the, I want to say, five health professions in Canada that's approved to deliver restricted psychosocial activity.

which would include psychotherapy for serious mental health concerns.

but a lot of the insurance systems at the time I started my practice, weren't recognizing that.

And even today, there's still a few insurers that have a hard time recognizing that OTs are able to do this.

Part of that, I think, is our own, accountability that we need to maybe advocate for that role a little bit better.

and I have seen a shift over the last eight years.

A lot more people have benefits coverage that includes occupational therapy.

So I think we've, over the last few years, it's becoming more accessible to people.

The effectiveness of our work is being more and more recognized.

and just by doing good work, I've found that it has built up steam more and more over the years.

Yeah, and even just maintaining those connections with other health professions too, I think.

Really help, at least, having other health professionals recognize the role of OT and, acknowledge it that way.

but at the same time, are there things from working with other health care professionals that you wish they knew about OT or wish they had a better understanding of, about occupational therapy.

I've, again, I don't think I've ever had a big issue working with another professional.

I think everybody working in these fields just want the best things for their clients and want their clients to feel better.

So more support is generally not a bad thing.

I do feel like it's on us to teach our role because we are a younger profession compared to psychology or physiotherapy.

Everybody knows what those guys are about.

Occupational therapy sounds like all we care about is work.

So we do have to explain to people that it's beyond that scope.

It's how we occupy our time in meaningful ways, whatever that may be.

I find like part of our job is to network, contact these colleagues, contact these case managers, fill them in, help them understand what we do.

And as long as we approach people with that kind of gentle, collegial, manner, Everybody's been really great to work with.

there isn't really anything I would say.

I wish people knew more about this.

part of that I think is because OT is so broad.

we've got OTs helping young children in the classroom with their pencil grip, to OTs helping elderly people get around their home with a walker.

it is such a broad profession, so I don't think we can fully expect everybody to get what we do.

if there's one thing I think that would be important to emphasize, it's that we take these things and make them practical.

We're very much trying to help people implement these things in their life.

So it's not just, here's my recommendation, go do this.

It's how do you see yourself doing this?

What's going to make it easier to do this?

When might be the right time to do this?

What's the meaning behind doing this?

What's the purpose?

Which I think any good therapist, regardless of their profession, would or should be doing.

That's kind of part of good behavior activation.

So psychologists that know their stuff are often able to do that too.

I do like to think that there's a little bit of a Venn diagram overlap there where OTs do some very specialized things, psychologists do some specialized things.

But then there's a large area where we have a lot of overlap, and that's where I think, the benefit of working with other professions is that clients are going to get these messages or these skills, and perspectives even.

Repeatedly, which enhances mastery.

If you're trying to get good at something, you're in therapy for a reason.

You're trying to get good at maybe managing anxiety or you're trying to get better at your daily life and having your routine and sticking to it.

You're going to improve more by learning from different people than by just sticking with one person.

Yeah, and getting that consistent message as well is so important.

I'm just thinking of, in a, previous podcast, we were talking to someone who focused a little bit more on the

physical aspects of the OT role and we talked a bit about that overlap with physiotherapy.

And it's, probably similar, where you illustrated quite well, yeah, there's a Venn diagram, different professions have, really specialized skills, but then there's area of overlap.

And I feel like OTs come across that quite often, which, sometimes can be maybe a little bit challenging to negotiate in a particular setting, how each profession is addressing that.

but at the same time, I think they can be so complementary, as you mentioned.

Yeah.

I mean, the luxury of me working in private practice is I run my own practice.

I have a team and.

We don't really, we, nobody else dictates how we work, right?

So we end up being able to be, you know, we're collaborative, but we also know what we're doing with our clients.

again, I think the idea of the overlap there works really well in an interdisciplinary team where you actually have more than two, you know, sometimes it's just an OT and a psych or an OT and a physio.

But with a big interdisciplinary team, like in a hospital, you've got OT, psych, physio, social work, nursing, you've got all these different disciplines, and I think that occupational therapy, being a function focused group, or a function focused discipline, I should say, can be the glue.

that integrates a lot of things, right?

nursing and psychiatry, for example, might be very concerned about medication management.

OTs are really well equipped to facilitate some medication management.

That's very functional.

When do I take my pills?

How do I stay organized every day?

How do I ensure that I'm not missing doses or overdosing?

in psychology, it creates some nice room where the psychologist could maybe focus on some of the really complex underlying trauma that a person might be dealing with in their life.

And the OT can come in and focus on how that is maybe impacting their daily life.

how they can better handle those symptoms or experiences in a practical setting and continue to progress functionally.

So it creates this nice little glue for how do we take all this hard work a client's doing and tie it all together and make sense of it for the person better.

And from that, people are often able to apply things in a more meaningful way.

If we don't understand what we're doing, if I can't make sense of my process or my practice, it's hard to follow through on it

Yeah, exactly.

That makes a lot of sense.

you mentioned earlier too that, you might typically get referrals from different places.

what are some of those, places that you might typically get referrals for

All over, I get referrals from lots of different insurance firms.

We get referrals from a variety of different insurance groups and organizations.

We've gotten referrals from personal injury lawyers.

We get referrals and requests from non profit groups at times, whether that's an Indigenous community or perhaps family services for children with disabilities in Alberta.

And we get private requests through word of mouth, through our online presence, whether that's the website or our therapy profiles on various directories.

So I think because I've been in practice for so long, there's a little bit of reputation and word of mouth that helps.

But I also, because I run a practice and I help other OTs build their caseload in private work.

I do a lot of networking with different referral sources and insurance groups and agencies.

I think it's a lot to do with relationship building and putting yourself out there.

Early in my practice, when I was developing my business more and my caseload on my client list, I would do a lot of talks.

Lots of free talks in the community.

I did talks for the Schizophrenia Society, for example, talking specifically to how do we treat psychosis, whether that's, again, for the individual themselves, or how do we support the caregivers around individuals living with schizophrenia?

I think as OTs in building our network, we really need to treat ourselves as entrepreneurs.

Again, we're a younger profession.

We aren't as established within the system of health care, although I would say in Alberta Health Services, we are extremely well recognized.

We're everywhere in AHS, which is awesome.

But in the private world and in the insurance world, we really do need to think about those entrepreneurial efforts to market ourselves and be innovative and present something a little different.

From what these large groups and organizations have heard so many times before from different providers and from different agencies.

Yeah, and especially when that role can look a little bit different in each practice, right?

Particularly in private practice.

So can you share an example of a time when you worked with someone and how your work with them contributed to improvements in their quality of life?

I'm

I think I'm pretty good at what I do.

yeah, I've worked in the field so long, I get people who have come and seen me for a period of time and I'm not a therapist who believes you got to keep coming to therapy.

Therapy is here so that you can address what you need to address and start thriving and living your own life again.

Good therapy means you don't have to keep coming to therapy.

And that is a flexible statement.

Some people engage in therapy for a longer term for their own reasons or good reasons.

so I have a few clients who have seen me on and off quite a bit over the years.

And it's nice to know, if I'm helping somebody with serious mental illness, that is not necessarily going to be cured, right?

We know that mental illness doesn't just go away, right?

It can be managed very well and people can have long periods of recovery.

And in fact, people can not ever have another issue potentially, right?

If the medications worked well or their treatment went really well and they've been applying these skills and they're living a rich life, I would say, but.

A lot of those issues come back.

And when I'm working with a client who has worked really hard on themselves and they've recovered from maybe a bipolar disorder, and then they start going through a really tumultuous life experience, right?

Maybe they lose their home.

Maybe they have a divorce.

Maybe, they're starting to deal with some addiction issues or dealing with workplace issues.

The fact that they will come back to me years later, potentially, I haven't heard from this person maybe three, four years, and then they reconnect to get that support.

To me, that tells me that they got a lot of benefit out of working with me, that I was still in their mind.

So that's probably the best feeling that I get.

I could give a more specific example if you'd like.

I'll just think for a second about a case.

Okay.

let's go with one of the adolescents or families that I've worked with over the years.

a long time ago, one of my clients was a young teenager, and she was dealing with a lot of self injury concerns.

a big part of that was that sense of hopelessness.

There isn't meaning in my life.

I don't have things to enjoy.

I don't have things to look forward to.

And a big part of that is not feeling understood.

Maybe not having a sense of identity with ourself and not having opportunity or access to do different things.

And so we really were able to work with that whole internal, external picture internally, exploring more of the self, connecting rather than disconnecting, so that we have a connection with these ideas of health and respect for our own bodies and ourselves, and kind of building that up slowly over time, while also finding enrichment.

In the external life, trying to discover activities that we enjoy, having some new experiences of fun and play so that it isn't just this dreary hopelessness.

And even working with the caregiver system to change how we communicate, to meet the needs of the adolescent or that teenager a bit better.

There's lots of specific examples out there, and I find I have to be careful because, I don't want to be too specific with anything that a client might be bringing to me.

so during COVID, there was a really long period of people starting to work from home.

And there was this wave of entry level professionals.

entering various careers, whether that's accounting or law, or engineering or medicine, in this work from home capacity.

And so we have a group of entry level professionals who are not benefiting now from the culture within their profession, and they don't have easy access to mentorship and support in the office.

And so for a period of time, it was, facilitating or helping these people deal with their anxiety and their stress levels.

Everybody's burning out.

Everybody's stuck at home.

We're not able to do things that we enjoy that recharge us.

So we have to address those internal issues and then externally.

trying to overcome those barriers of distance and isolation to take initiative and make those requests.

Hey, I need to talk to my mentor, my supervisor more regularly.

I need more support.

How can I network with my colleagues better?

So again, bridging those gaps of internal, external health and function, in all kinds of settings and for all kinds of clients.

a lot of what we do, I would describe as transdiagnostic.

I am not a diagnostic based clinician.

I am a symptom or experience focused clinician.

So what that means is we're really working with what a person is experiencing in their life and less working with, the specific label.

So a lot of the strategies and interventions that we're applying, work on the neuroscience of our human bodies.

And because of that, they tend to work for lots of different people, dealing with lots of different things.

And of course, there's still lots of specialized, techniques and interventions that I don't do.

And we would actually maybe suggest or recommend.

connecting with other professionals for those things.

Yeah, no, that makes sense.

That the last example was really interesting and I think really relevant given sort of the life transitions that people have gone through.

Like you said, completing their training and now they're going into the workplace.

So not only are they transitioning to, moving into their professional career, but then also dealing with the transition everyone is probably still going through, quite honestly, to those kind of alternative roles.

work environments, whether that's hybrid or remote or in person.

and that's a unique way describing how, yes, OTs is involved in work, but, it might be a different aspect of that work area too.

Um, that's awesome.

So just getting closer To the end, at the very beginning, you talked a bit about how your interests and activities that you did prior to becoming an OT really led you to the area of work you're in.

So are you able to incorporate any of those interests or passions into your current work?

yeah, quite a bit, actually.

part of encouraging people to, explore new things or try new activities or find new interests means at times I'm going to experience that with them, right?

I'm going to help them.

engage in something different.

So I might meet a client for a session at a climbing wall and we go for a climb and we help them enjoy the activity and see if it's something that they want to do more of, or go to the gym and weightlift.

skiing has always been in the back of my mind.

It'd be nice to, write off a ski trip or something as a client session.

but, it's also a little bit higher barrier for people due to costs.

So we're balancing those ideas.

But certainly there's lots of opportunity, depending on funding, for OTs to facilitate the actual activity engagement.

And sometimes that means the funder, so an insurance company who's requested my services, may ask me to go meet a client at their home and help them with their home organization a bit.

that stuff is important because, There is a very big relationship between therapeutic progress and momentum.

And for some clients, of course, dealing with certain issues like maybe depression, it's hard to get momentum going.

But if we can support them to start that process, Get the ball rolling.

Then it's a lot easier for clients to build progress and maintain that momentum on their own.

So oftentimes, if I'm actually doing an activity with a client, I view that as like a kickstart.

We're really trying to get you doing these things independently or with natural supports like your friends or your family.

you're not going to want to do this with me, the therapist, all the time.

For some clients, we have to do that more.

And for some clients, it's maybe a one off.

For some clients, it's just a conversation and then they might go do it, but everybody's different.

And so I think being a good therapist means being very responsive to what the clients actually need and not being rigid, Oh, I don't do that.

Or, No, we have to do this, right?

So being very flexible, and some people really benefit from a little bit of that hands on, interactive, let's go do this.

in my practice, we're a remote team.

So we do video sessions, of course, but in person is still really important.

I do a lot of trauma work.

And I very much appreciate doing trauma work in person.

So one thing that we do as a whole team to accommodate that for people is we do walking sessions, which is very difficult if the weather's bad, if it's too cold, of course, up in Canada, it's freezing sometimes, or if it's too smoky out.

but walking sessions are a really wonderful way to get a little bit of that activity engagement.

together and be able to have meaningful conversations, address what clients are really working on, and do hands on skill practice.

So there's lots of ways we can integrate the actual activity in our work.

another way that we can do that, maybe we don't have the funding or the support to go do the activity with the client.

We can do it imaginally.

We can rehearse and prepare for an activity in a session like this, over the screen even, and that engages those neural pathways for doing.

So there's lots of little ways that we can help clients build that momentum and see that shift.

that they can then hopefully, usually, uh, if we do it really well, continue on their own.

Yeah, and that really speaks to even those, like, you know, being able to look at those external factors or the environment, being able to work with someone in sort of their space, And can really empower them to take ownership too.

That's great.

so what is one thing that you think everyone should know about occupational therapy?

If you can think of one thing, I'm sure there's multiple.

Right.

I'll echo what I said earlier because occupational therapy brings the function focus forward in our work for how people are actually living their lives day to day, week to week.

I like to think of us as the glue in the team, right?

We really can integrate a lot of different perspectives on health.

In a way that the clients can then act on very tangibly and practically.

if there's barriers to that, if there's challenges, we can work with the client to break that down and make it more achievable.

so I think there's always a role for OT in good healthcare.

I would actually very much encourage people who maybe they're struggling with other providers or struggling with the traditional approaches to consider OT.

Because we often think about things outside the box.

A big part of our practice is innovation because no two people are the same.

Environments for everybody, whether it's a workplace or a home or the community, they're all different.

And the activities that we like to engage in are all different and varied.

if I like to cook, wonderful, but what's the kitchen like?

And everybody's kitchen is different, right?

And so we really bring this out of the box lens to what's really going to work here.

Um, some, sometimes I hear this analogy and I don't know if it echoes in myself as much as maybe for more OTs who work in environment settings.

Um, but we're like the engineers in the healthcare field.

where we're able to make these fine tweaks and nuanced changes to what maybe a skill or a technique a person is trying or the activity that they're engaging in to suddenly make it way more achievable.

We see this probably most prominently in, some physical health domains.

If we're dealing with, motor control issues, then we're going to figure out how we can help this client do up their buttons or brush their hair, right?

And so that engineering or innovation idea comes really forward.

In mental health, that can be a little less tangible.

but I think what we do really well in mental health to achieve that innovation is we really lean into the person.

What's important about this to you, right?

How do you see this playing in your life?

And then we take all that detail that we tease out.

And we put the puzzle together to say, okay, here's what I think might be helpful.

And if it doesn't work, then it's just an experiment and we'll try it again.

We'll do something different.

We can tweak this further.

Um, and so this process of iterative innovation and engineering of what's actually going to help the client speeds up the process.

in recovery and rehabilitation.

Yeah, and it's really that trial and error process that I think validates people's experiences that sometimes not everything happens the first try, but at the same time, there's always an opportunity to try something different.

so I want to ask one last question, and this is really in the sense that, maybe there's people listening to this podcast that are interested in becoming an occupational therapist.

what qualities or skills do you think are important?

for someone who would like to be an OT.

I think there are key qualities and skills that transcend OT because.

We are a people focused practice, right?

And all healthcare professionals are that, regardless of your discipline.

So having a high degree for compassion.

And empathy, I think, is a prerequisite for anybody who wants to call themselves a therapist.

Um, and being able to listen, right?

To really be able to actively listen, show a person that we understand what might be happening deeply.

And if we don't understand, to own that.

Being a good therapist in my world means being a good model, right?

I'm here to help people thrive.

I can be a model for change in that capacity.

So I think we need to practice what we preach.

And if we're not willing to do that, we're going to be in for a tougher ride as a therapist.

mental health and a lot of different healthcare professions, dentistry, for example, have very, very, very high burnout rates.

if we're not in it for the right reasons, I don't think it's going to work.

More specifically to being an occupational therapist, I think you have to have a really strong appreciation for the uniqueness of individuals.

and the context in which everybody lives their lives differently.

once we start painting with too broad a brush, we start losing the sight of the person, we're not going to be quite as effective as we might otherwise be.

those would be the big traits that I encourage.

I think the first one would be summed up as Be kind, right?

Show that forward.

and then the second one is be open.

And if you can have those two core capacities as a human, you could probably be a really great therapist.

These skills are very learnable.

The knowledge is very learnable.

If I can get through, That graduate training, anybody can do it.

I'm sure I'm not, I'm definitely not the best student or academic.

but these soft skills I think are really what separate amazing transformative therapists from people who are clocking in or clocking out.

Yeah, and I think that, like you say, it transcends OT.

it goes beyond into, any sort of, person facing profession that someone is in.

It's not necessarily specific to OT, but being able to, really attend to someone's context, what their individual goals are is so key as well.

thank you.

that was my last question for today.

I really appreciate you spending time with us today, sharing your experiences and all of the different things you do to support clients in mental health and promoting participation in meaningful activities.

So thanks again for being here today.

And that wraps up episode three of Beyond Barriers.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thanks.

This is a podcast produced and developed by the Society for Alberta Occupational Therapists.

Our podcast is hosted by occupational therapists and is intended to educate and get listeners excited about all the different ways that OTs support health and well being for people at all stages of life.

If you enjoyed this episode, Feel free to subscribe and follow Beyond Barriers, Navigating Health and Function on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for listening.