OT Month podcast

As an occupational therapist, occupational therapy assistant, educator, or student, you help people to participate in the things they want and need to do. Listen to how these two occupational therapists are telling the world about the value of OT.

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Narration: As an occupational therapist, occupational therapy assistant, educator, or student, you help people to participate in the things they want and need to do. To honor this vital profession, the occupational therapy community celebrates the impacts you have made in your clients’ lives during National Occupational Therapy Month in April. During this month, we celebrate the work of more than 230,000 OTs, OTAs, educators, and students nationwide.

In today’s episode, we speak with two occupational therapists who are using their platforms to celebrate Occupational Therapy Month. Shannen Marie Coley and Dr. Heather Jackson-Peña share how they are educating thousands through their OT Month initiatives. They also share why it’s important for them to celebrate the profession not only during the month of April, but throughout the year.

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Narration: Shannen Marie Coley, also known as @ShannenMarie_OT on Instagram, celebrates occupational therapy with her 14,000-plus followers. For the past six years during the month of April, Coley has shared a new photo every day related to occupational therapy that correlates with a letter from the alphabet. Many in the OT community know this as the “ABCs of OT” challenge.

Now with thousands of participants every year, Coley is proud of what the challenge has become. She still remembers when she was first introduced to occupational therapy after tearing her ACL when she was 16.

Shannen: I was introduced to physical therapy, and shortly after that, I was introduced to occupational therapy. As someone who just loves the arts as well as the humanities and sciences, it kind of aligned with the type of person I am. And as I learned more about it, I just kind of decided that this was the path.

Narration: For Coley, it was occupational therapy’s holistic approach that really piqued her interest.

Shannen: I have much respect for my PT colleagues, but in my personal experience with physical therapy, they definitely healed me in regards to helping me to get my range of motion back, strength and confidence, but I just felt like there was something missing. I felt a different spark when I shadowed occupational therapy. I feel like they truly gathered what it was the person used to like to do or maybe what they aspire to do again and help them in that realm, and I thought that was very special.

Narration: Today, Coley’s work mostly focuses on patients in geriatric rehab. As someone who cares about people, she says occupational therapy is perfect for her because it is a “people’s profession.”

Shannen: I feel like the human perspective is something that needs to have more emphasis. When I have a difficult patient or when I maybe don’t agree with their lack of insight, I am able to humble myself first and then secondly, kind of reroute the direction I’m going with that treatment plan by remembering that this person is someone’s grandmother, this person was someone’s teacher. Their story matters, even when it might not align with the way I think something should go.

Narration: Coley believes that it is the responsibility of the OT community to continue to educate and advocate for the profession for it to succeed in the future.

Shannen: One way to do that is by simply discussing it. I think there’s a variety of ways that we can celebrate OT Month. Whether that’s going to conferences or disseminating information to the public, whether that is through social media or maybe providing in-services at work, but I think it’s important that everyone in the OT community in their own unique way acknowledges and celebrates the profession so that it remains the beautiful profession that it is. So we can avoid other professions encroaching into our scope.

Narration: The idea for the “ABCs of OT” came to Coley six years ago while she was still an OT student. Her goal was to share information about occupational therapy with the public.

Shannen: I think I might have been at a bookstore and I saw some ABC books. I love children's books. It was like an aha moment, and it provided me with this catchy hashtag #ABCsofOT. And it also was a structured outline of what to post. So, April 1st is letter A. You can share about letter A. Whatever that A word is, whether it's adaptive equipment or adaptive. And then it goes on to letter B, which is April 2nd. It just keeps going forward and forward.

The first two years, I did it by myself and then by some grace, there was a couple of people who decided, “hey can I do the ABCs of OT,” and it kind of evolved from there. Just kind of goes to show how unique the profession of OT is. Anybody is allowed to participate whether or not you are a practitioner. It’s open to aspiring practitioners, former practitioners, and students. They simply use the hashtag #ABCsofOT and tag me, and then I share in my story. So, right now, if you go to my page, there are hundreds of beautiful ABCs of OTs in my highlights. Long story short, it’s an OT advocacy and visibility challenge where the goal is to share the breadth of our profession.

Narration: With people now participating in the challenge from eleven different countries and numerous organizations, Coley had no intention for the “ABCs of OT” to become this popular, but she is grateful for how it has grown and the amazing people she has met along the way.

Shannen: There’s just been a lot of outreach. People are messaging me. Future students, practitioners are saying that I have provided an opportunity to share more, and kind of getting them out of their bubble. Which, I just kindly remind them that I am just a Southern girl who just happens to have an Instagram. Ultimately, it’s just provided a sense of community, fostered support, and helped keep the happiness in the profession alive. And I feel like we have to hold on to joy, especially in this time of the pandemic.

Narration: And for those questioning whether to start their own challenge related to occupational therapy, Coley encourages everyone to take the chance.

Shannen: I would just encourage the person to do it, to commit to it. Your voice is enough, and regardless of your following count, none of that matters. What matters is your intentions, why you’re doing it, who you’re doing it for, and how you’re able to share that legacy and share your spirit.

Narration: The 30 Day OT Photo Challenge, started by Dr. Heather Jackson Peña, is a photo challenge she manages every April on her company’s Instagram page Young and Well. Like Coley, Dr. Peña didn’t know much about occupational therapy as a teenager. In fact, it was her high school Spanish teacher who introduced her to OT.

Heather: One day in my Spanish class, my Spanish teacher was talking about his wife and a patient that she had. And he started describing her job, and I was like, what is this job? And it was occupational therapy, and she at that time had worked in assisted living and post-stroke. He would talk about some of the strategies that they use with those patients at the time, this was in the 90s, and I thought that was fascinating. I asked if I could observe her, and so I did, and that was it. I observed her in an assisted living and rehab facility where she was using a balloon for getting tracking for post-stroke for the patients, and she used lemon on their tongues to stimulate their taste, and at that moment, I just knew.

Narration: Now, as a pediatric occupational therapist, Dr. Peña always knew she wanted to work with kids but wasn’t sure in what setting. After one rotation at Children’s National Hospital, she questioned if working with kids would be too much of an emotional load for her.

Heather: I knew that was too much, and then they asked me to do a site visit at a local school, and that’s where I just realized, oh, this is it. Like this is their everyday life, and this is the part that I want to be. And so initially, it was schools, but then as I got more into my own personal journey and motherhood and also working in schools, I realized, oh no, it's a package deal with parents and kids, and parents really play a huge role in the everyday life of the children and how they’re able to grow to their potential. And so now I’m working with both adults and kids in that way, but it really came from knowing that I wanted to work with children.

Narration: Similar to Coley, Dr. Peña believes that the OT community must continue to advocate for occupational therapy in order for it to continue to grow. One way she does this is through her 30-Day OT Photo Challenge.

She remembers starting the challenge at AOTA’s Annual Conference in 2013. Then pregnant with her son, she was unable to take part in many of the sessions because she was so sick.

Heather: So, I presented, and then I was unable to participate the rest of the time. I just remember feeling very left out. I love conference. At the time, I was a private practitioner, so I always used conference as a way to re-energize, as a way to network because I didn’t have a group of therapists to come back to in an office to problem solve in. I thought of it that year, as a way for me to be able to contribute when I couldn’t necessarily be in the mix.

Narration: Since starting the challenge, Dr. Peña has mostly focused on sharing images related to occupational therapy on her Instagram page because of the visual component that it offers. Many of the photos are purposely chosen to add value to the profession.

Heather: We’ve taken our words from the OT Practice Framework. So, they’re very much rooted in what’s within our frame of reference, and we distribute them throughout the month. And then, we encourage people to post a reflective picture about what it is for them for that day. And we try to always write a reflective post about what the role of occupational therapy is and how we can continue to spread awareness for what we do. And a lot of time, people are very surprised that that’s what OT does or that it’s part of our frame of reference. So, we try to just really stay rooted in the frame of reference so that we can discuss our scope.

Narration: Dr. Peña is most proud of the community of like-minded people she has developed because of the OT Month Photo Challenge.

Heather: Students love it, and they’ve been participating. I find that it really provides so much community and energy, and over time that has built. If you just search the hashtag, there’s like thousands and thousands of posts. Back when we first started, it was like a hundred or a hundred and fifty, just really small, and now you see that it’s grown. And so, I think for our social media, our goals now are really to attract like-minded people who are looking for support. Not only for occupational therapy, but for also understanding children from a different light and I think that these OT Month opportunities are really what get people aware of what we’re doing.

Narration: Although both Coley and Dr. Peña can both agree that occupational therapy has grown tremendously since they started their careers, they still have high hopes for the future of the profession. For Coley, she hopes occupational therapy is more widely known, especially among the medical profession.

Shannen: I dream of the day where a new patient, or a layperson, or my neighbor has a general idea of what OT is without asking. Most of all, I hope that the breadth and scope of our profession becomes understood across disciplines.

My husband is a resident physician. Throughout his pre-med, medical school, and residency training I’ve had the unique perspective of cheering him on, and also being friends with all of these “newbie” doctors. The one thing that I want is a change in their schooling. I do not believe, and it is my limited perspective, but I do not believe that medical trainees are being provided with the information or the knowledge that lets them know how often they should be referring to occupational therapy. So, one of my aspirations this coming year is to reach out to some pre-med and pre-health and medical schools to offer brief presentations on occupational therapy as a way to actively give back to the profession.

Narration: For Dr. Peña, in the future, she hopes that people will understand that occupational therapy is a lifespan service and wants therapy to become normalized by the public. And in the pediatric setting, this could help parents to understand OT practitioners are there to help their children reach their fullest potential.

Heather: I do have a lot of parents who are concerned when they bring their child to an evaluation of what to say to them. Typically, it comes out as "I don’t want him to think that there’s anything wrong with him that he has to go to therapy." And I would say that the thing that I really have been putting a lot of effort behind is to communicate to all of them that when you need help with something, you ask for it. And it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you, and we need to normalize that. I think that normalizing asking for help, normalizing getting help, normalizing therapy, of course, any kind of therapy. That is really like my sort of personal mission and goal for OT and in my little world. That way when anybody needs to get therapy it’s okay to say it. “Oh, what were you doing today? Therapy.” You know, and that it’s okay to say that.

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Narration: During Occupational Therapy Month, Coley and Dr. Peña shared posts on their social media platforms every day, many of which are still available for the public to view. Visit Coley’s Instagram profile @shannenmarie_ot and Dr. Peña’s @youngandwell.

If you missed this year’s OT Month celebration, don’t forget that you can celebrate occupational therapy throughout the year. Share your OT pride every day by shopping our OT Month products and exploring our list of ideas at www.aota.org/otmonth.

Thank you, Shannen Marie Coley and Dr. Heather Jackson Peña for everything you are doing for the occupational therapy profession and for joining me on the podcast today. My name is Chelcie Rosborough with AOTA.