When I first graduated I worked at Ipswich hospital for 9 months before joining CUH. I completed several rotations as a band 5 including stroke, neuro-rehab, acute neuroscience, rheumatology, medicine and care of the elderly.
What’s your role in our organisation?
Occupational therapist (OT) in the hand therapy team.
Tell us a bit about your CUH journey – when did you join, what positions have you held here?
When I first graduated I worked at Ipswich hospital for 9 months before joining CUH. I completed several rotations as a band 5 including stroke, neuro-rehab, acute neuroscience, rheumatology, medicine and care of the elderly. As a band 6 I worked in orthopaedics, hand therapy, care of the elderly and neuroscience.
I then became a team lead in our surgery and oncology team for 2 years and then I was the team lead for the acute care hub OT team for 5 years. Recently I have become a static band 6 in our hand therapy team.
What do you enjoy most about your role?
The thing I most enjoy about being in hand therapy is getting to know the patients and helping some of them from not being able to use their hand at all to returning to their jobs and hobbies and seeing the progress they make over a period of weeks or months is really rewarding.
Our hands our really important and we don’t realise just how important they are until we injury them! I also love talking, so outpatient suits me really we as I have a new patient every 45-60 minutes to talk to!!
The thing I enjoy most about being an OT is the variety of areas we can work in. I have spent my whole working career in an acute hospital but have had the opportunity to work in inpatient and outpatient settings as well as acute and more rehab focused areas of work.
I love the fact that I can completely change my role without having to change my career or work place. But if you wanted to change when you work there are plenty of roles in OT not in a hospital.
What advice would you give to someone who is starting their AHP career journey?
Do some work experience so you definitely know what that particular career entails. An acute hospital like CUH is a great place to start an AHP career due to the wide variety of rotations and opportunities available.