1. Review your goals and objectives for your internship and assess your internship site as it provided a setting for achieving those goals and objectives. 

   1. The previous goals that I had created for myself during my internship included learning more about the daily life of an occupational therapist, creating plans of care, read and interpret notes, stay versatile and creative, learn how to handle situations where kids are listening and not listening, know how to listen for the needs of the patients, figure out how to complete occupational therapy evaluations and score them, and how to document notes. 

2. Explain and show how you achieved the goals you set. 

   1. Everyone at the Care Center helped me to achieve the goals that I had set for myself. I have now seen the ins and outs of what an occupational therapist does each and every day, whether it be the actual patient care or the administrative duties that come alongside with it. I got insight into how to create plans of care by shadowing over my therapist supervisor doing it and then she would often ask me questions about my thoughts on it to help me learn more for myself. I now know how to use their specific note system and be able to interpret it to see the patient plan of care and what needs to be worked on. I was able to use my creative instincts when it came to coming up with weekly themes within the office and activities that went along with it; yet, this also taught be how to be versatile and willing to switch up plans if it wasn’t working for a certain patient. I shadowed how a lot of the therapists changed directions of care when a patient wasn’t listening to what they were asking, and how to handle difficult situations, while seeing what the patient needed to. My therapist also took me through how to give an evaluation and how to score it, and it really helped me learn some insight into occupational therapist duties. I learned so much at my internship and I would say that my shadowing and the work I put into it really helped me to complete my goals and I enjoyed every second of it. 

3. Choose one project/assignment and describe it as follows: 

   1. How well do you think you accomplished the project or dealt with the experience(s)?

      1. My favorite project that I completed during my time at the Care Center was my sensory light box, which I got into detail about in the PROJECT section on this website below. I think I accomplished it well and dealt with it in a professional manner. My light box was a way for patients who tend to gravitate towards light and sensory components and combine them together. It was a layer of boxes that the therapist could add rice, sand, blocks, etc. to and it would light up through the materials for the patients to play or work on other skills with. 

   2. What skills did you use? (e.g., writing, speaking, organizing, interpersonal, counseling, management, research, etc.) 

      1. For this project, I mostly used research and organizing skills, but also interpersonal skills. I did a lot of research to find what items worked best for this project and went around to multiple different stores to find what exact items I needed to create the final project in the best way. I also wanted to have enough research to follow that made sure that the box I was creating was going to end up doing what it was created for in an appropriate manner for the patients. I was very organized in this process and made sure that I kept my coordinator up to date with the timeline on what I had found was working, and what was not—which is where the interpersonal skills came in with my good communication. I made sure I was completing what they had wanted, but doing it in my own way.

   3. Point out your strengths and weaknesses. What would you do differently? 

      1. I think I was able to complete this project well. I was very communicative about what the therapist wanted and checked back in with them about my project as I worked on it to see their thoughts and recommendations. I thought I was able to be very creative with it and in the end, the sensory light box was a very big hit. Since I completed this project in a timely manner, I was able to see it be put to use with so many patients and they really seemed to like it, as did the therapists. 

4. Assess your contribution to the internship site. 

   1. My daily contribution to my internship included shadowing, while helping set/clean up sessions, preparing daily crafts, entertaining the children, helping with any additional tasks during each session, administrative duties, helping the therapists complete paperwork, work on projects, and more. My goal as their intern was to help them with any possible task they could think of that they needed help with, all while shadowing and learning as much as I possible could about the profession. 

5. Has your experience changed or reinforced your career goals? Changed or reinforced your educational goals? Could you see yourself as a professional in this field? 

   1. My experience at the Care Center has confirmed for myself that this is definitely what I want to do for my future career. It showed me that not all days are perfect, but that is okay. What matters is that you are still making a difference in someone’s well-being, and I want nothing more than to do that every day. I learned so much about becoming an occupational therapist and the daily life of what they do. I can 1000% see myself as a professional in this field, and more specifically, at this moment in time it also reinforced that I wanted to continue working with children as well. 

6. Relate your internship experience to your academic work on campus. List at least 5 specific courses (by title, not number) in your major that were useful at this site.  

   1. To start, I think 2 very helpful courses were Anatomy and Physiology I and II. These classes gave me so much background into how the body works, which is important when it comes to occupational therapy, as you work with a lot of patients who have disabilities and need to know how to handle it appropriately. Another class I found very helpful was Lifespan Developmental Psychology. Since I have only worked in a therapy center adult-focused before this internship, I did not have any personal experience working with kids in this setting; however, this class prepared me for it. Lifespan developmental psychology let me see how people start from the womb until death, and it helped to guide me through the ‘typical’ timeline of life. Abnormal psychology also helped me a lot when it came to my internship at this site. It taught me a lot about abnormal behaviors in the body and treatments that tend to work for them. Another class I found helpful a lot of the time was Public Speaking, as you spend a lot of time talking to the patients, their parents/family, and working with other therapists as well, which is very important to be able to do professionally. Two more classes I found quite helpful during this internship was Overview of Health Care Systems and Human Health and Disease, as both of this allowed me to see how the different varieties of healthcare work and how they work with others to get the best outcome and find the best treatment plans for all their patients, no matter what diseases/disabilities they may have.

7. Were there instances at your site where the health literacy training was utilized?  Explain. 

   1. I found that health literacy training was very helpful and was utilized daily at my internship. Health literacy training allowed me to learn about all of the health materials and information to make the best decisions for a patient’s health—this is used every day in a therapy center. Therapists must make decisions and find plans that are individualized for each patient and their characteristics. Health literacy training also taught me about different principles, such as Gestalt Psychology, which I also saw put to use daily in my internship location. Gestalt Psychology talks about how you will learn to understand the parts of something by understanding the whole. If you learn the whole body, you can metaphorically break it down and learn more detailed about the parts of it, which is so important in this field to understand patient’s thoughts. Another big part of health literacy training that I want to touch on is how to motivate behavior change, as this is important when working with children. Knowledge, confidence, and motivation tend to equal behavior change. If you follow approaches that are focused on the patient and their goals, you can start making behavior changes by giving them support, taking action, reinforcing good behaviors, and offering them skills to refrain from relapsing to old behaviors again—all which occupational therapists used multiple times a day. 

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