AOTA Salary Report, The Ultimate Face Shield & Family Interview Questions

AOTA recently released their 2019 Workforce & Salary Survey Executive Summary. If you participated in the survey, you should have already gotten a copy of it emailed to you. If you haven’t seen it, you can check it out here.

There were some things in this report that I found surprising. First of all, the majority of OT’s who responded are currently working in hospital settings.

Where I live, hospitals have been laying off or cutting hours for rehab staff on a fairly regular basis in recent years. OT jobs, whether pediatric or adult, are definitely less stable across the board in my hometown. And not just because of COVID. It’s been going on for years.

Given that, I would assume that more therapists are going into private practice than ever before. But according to the survey, “the proportion of those who are self- employed for a portion of their work in occupational therapy has decreased, with a larger proportion of practitioners doing all of their occupational therapy work for an organization.”

Obviously, the job market will vary by geographic location. And larger metropolitan areas tend to have more jobs and more opportunities for private practice, regardless of your profession.

Despite that, I would have expected the percentage of therapists in private practice to grow every year, given our global move towards a “gig economy”.

Another interesting finding was that the percentage of therapists working in early intervention or schools has decreased since 2010. Working in adult therapy is definitely more lucrative, but this still surprises me.

Student loan debt has increased dramatically in the last 10-20 years. When I left OT school 20 years ago, I had 5 digits of student loan debt. These days, it’s common for OT students I teach to have at least $150k of student loan debt when they graduate.

I imagine it’s extremely difficult to live and pay off that debt on a pediatric therapy salary. Maybe that’s a driving factor?

Any insights into why this might be? I’d love to hear your experience.

I spend a lot of time with toddlers, and zoom therapy and hospital masks ain’t cuttin’ it, as we say in the South. I’ve all but given up on teletherapy for anyone who is nonverbal and/or under the age of 4 unless their parents are REALLY motivated and involved.

I’ve been searching for ways to do therapy that protects me and my patients without interfering with therapy. As you’ve probably found, there are no great options.

A speech friend turned me on to this face shield and I’ve really been impressed. It has more coverage than a regular face shield, which makes me feel somewhat more protected.  

They are really pricey, but easy to sanitize and as comfortable as wearing plexiglass can be. 

I still wear a hospital mask underneath it when I can. You can check it out here.

I recently found this great resource from the Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families. It’s a guide to writing IFSP goals for early intervention.

The pdf has some great strengths-based interview questions that would work for any family you treat. These are some of my favorites:

• How would that make a difference in your day or make different times during your day easier?
• When would changes be most helpful and noticeable?
• Describe the ideal situation if all was going well.What would you, your child and others be doing during that time?
• How do you feel when___?
• How do you think your child feels when___?
• What do you enjoy about your child?
• What daily routines are going really well/challenging?
• What have you tried so far?
• How can we arrange things so he will be successful?

This is definitely one to keep in your reference file. You can download it here.