So there's some challenges in being, I suppose it would be a trailblazer in some ways, but yeah, It's not easy. I think I always think about trailblazing as hacking your way through the jungle with a machete, right? It's resistance and resistance and oh shoot, I went down the wrong way. Yes, exactly. I still don't feel I've gone down the wrong road, but I totally get that having seen the machete action in real life. you're listening to the Brave OT Podcast with me, Carlyn Neek.
This podcast is all about empowering occupational therapists to step up, level up, blaze some trails, and maybe engage in a little conscious rebellion. In service of our profession, our clients, our work, our businesses, and living our mission wholeheartedly. We are all about keeping it real, doing hard things. Things unhustling, being curious, exploring, growing through our challenges, and finding joy, fulfillment, and vitality as we do so. Really, we're OT ing ourselves, and each other.
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Or if you're ready to get started, you can use the code VITALITY at the time of signup for a one month grace period applied to your new account. Whether you're just starting out a new OT business, or considering developing a new product, technology, or transitioning in your career, I think you'll find a lot of value in this episode. I am excited to be talking to my friend and colleague Ruth Duggan.
In this episode, we talk about a lot of parallels in the process of, starting a business or a product and the process we're familiar with as OTs. First, we identify a need, then we explore what the obstacles are, what the challenges are, what's getting in the way we assess, and from there, create solutions, reassess, re evaluate, adjust the solutions. This is how we go about assessing our clients, and this is a way we go about assessing offering a new service or product in our OT businesses.
This So I hope you will find some comfort in hearing this iterative, creative process that is familiar. We share a little bit about when we were getting started in our businesses very long ago, and how we've developed new offers and products. And Ruth talks about how she is preparing for that next phase of her business where she's less active in it. and part of that is starting an app, which I think you'll find really interesting to hear about. Hi Ruth. Thank you for being here.
Oh, thank you for having me. We get to talk almost, for, it was once a week for quite a time and now we're down to every other week with the other project we're working on together. So this feels natural. Yeah, that's right. And, it's amazing to me how you can have meetings with people that you've never met, over years, and it's as a group of OT, and you get to know each other. You do really nicely in both a professional way, but also personal. Absolutely.
We will let people in a moment on exactly what we've been working on together, but let's start with you. Can you tell us a little bit about you? Sure. I'll start, I live in Nova Scotia, just outside of Halifax and I have a partner and we live on the ocean and it's really beautiful here. I've worked practically since I was 12 years old as an occupational therapist. Not really. I just, unofficially for a few years.
Yes. I became an OT, when I was like 21 years old, back in the 80s, and I've been doing it for more than 35 years, and I've gotten the opportunity to work in a lot of different settings. You start off in something where you think you want to be in pediatrics, and then I went to a rehab job where I worked for seven or eight years, and then I went overseas, and worked in the Middle East for three years as part of a Canadian team.
And, in doing that, that was probably the first risky thing I've ever done in my life. The Ministry of Health was looking at improving rehab services. And so a team of Canadian therapists, OTs, physios, speech therapists, nurses, we had a full roster, and we went and set up a rehab center and we taught local therapists, and we provided services. my role was to help to establish an adult neuro program with the therapist there.
So we did, seating education, we did stroke education, spinal cord injury, and then I got partnered up with one of the therapists and we started to make some inroads into an acute neuro hospital where I had never worked before, you know what OT does. And so I went in with this one therapist and six months or a year, every week we went in and Went for rounds and said where we could help and, really starting to gradually, increase the services there. Now that was a long time ago.
And since then Kuwait now has an OT school. So it's come a really a long way. I think there were seven OTs when we first went in the whole country. Wow. So it was a big deal. Yeah. It was kind of a good thing to do. And anyway, that was a sidebar.
When I came back, I couldn't imagine working in a traditional setting anymore, so I went into private practice and did that on my own for a couple years, but then joined a group of OTs, and we've built a really nice practice here in Nova Scotia of, we've got 12 or 13 in our group, and we do all kinds of services. We're community based and, you know. when you're in private practice, you see where needs are, and you go to them. Yeah, it's filling in gaps, right? That's right. Exactly.
Yeah. So you learn a lot over the years. And, as you've done, if you learn something, you apply it in new settings. So let's, and that's what you do with your activate work, right? Yeah. and my private practice also, translating some things to the ACTivate Vitality, stuff and coaching has been one thing too, but yeah, that finding ways of adapting and iterating.
I remember when I first was dipping my toe into going into private practice, and I remember going to Alberta meeting of, OTs who are in private practice. And at that time it was almost all medical legal OTs, which wasn't an area I was really interested in, but how am I connecting with the other people who are doing private work? What's needed? I needed to information gather. And so somebody noticed me as a newbie coming into that meeting.
They'd been meeting for 10 years or something at that point. And I said, they're like, Oh, what do you do? I'm like, I don't even know. Here's what I know how to do. Like I had worked at CBI for years before. And, and then I worked in home care. I'm like, here's what I know how to do, but I'm not even sure what people are looking for here cause a lot of my, Private work had been in Ontario also and needed to get the lay of the land. And somebody said, Oh, I would call what you do this.
I'm like, okay, sure. I'll do that. And, but just getting to know people and just humanizing that experience and then finding, okay, I ended up doing a lot of long term disability work in the end, but that wasn't, I didn't know that there was a big demand for it at the time. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. and I, and what you probably found was that's the work that happens to be there, so that's what you do.
Yeah. And then you start to find a niche where you're good at mental health and then you get drawn into that, area. So yeah, that's true. Kind of what happens. And now you are in the, this phase of your career where you're starting to look at that occupational shift for yourself in what that wind down looks like or what, and I know you already take time off and travel a lot and have gone to lots of interesting places, but you're not wanting to, just cut it off and be done with work.
What's this, tell me about this phase. Well, it started a long time ago, probably 10 years ago. When my business partner and I were starting to look at that transition shift, because you know it's coming, right? and, one of the things that we talked about with our business consultant back then was setting up some things for, some opportunities for passive income, as well as Which, P. S. is never passive. No, I know, I was going to say, it's a mountain of work.
Yeah that, and one of the things that was suggested was also this transfer of knowledge because what we were trying to do was make our company be less about us as individuals and more about us as a group that we would all have the same knowledge. And setting up education programs was part of that. So how do we, teach the therapists that are working with us that are more junior how to do the same things that we've been doing, and some of the more challenging work.
So it's specifically in my case, this is not all I've done, but I've done a lot of it, is the vocational types of work. So job demands analysis, ergonomic assessments, and then some of that medical legal stuff, the transferable skills analysis and employability assessments. And so that's has been my corner in our company. And, so as people, as we've had therapists come through, I teach them what I can, but what I decided to do was put together education programs.
So it's less about, again, less about me, and more about, 'how can I transfer that knowledge without me being there all the time?' So I was putting together protocols that people could look at and, and as I was doing one specific one for transferable skills analysis, I said, 'if I'm doing this for my team, I should probably also just put it out there for other people to do.' And that snowballed into something much bigger than a nice idea.
Yeah. Cause there are so many ways to do this, like even backing up a little bit too, thinking about, okay, as I prepare for my business to not be about me before the end of my involvement, There was an episode I did with Gary Thorne, who does business advising with, small therapy businesses, clinical businesses.
And he was talking too about if you were preparing to sell it, which isn't what you've described, but you need to do that too, where you detach it from, everybody likes to work with Ruth. That's why Ruth's business is busy. Nobody's going to buy Ruth's business without Ruth, because it's all about Ruth and her relationships. Exactly. You need to prepare ahead of time for that being not about you. It's about processes and ways that you do things and that other people can replicate that.
And so as you think about transferring yourself out of the business, you're not necessarily selling it to a third party, but how is that replicated within the business? That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And it makes it more saleable, if that's a word. That's the financial people use that as a word. But if we did decide to sell, then having those protocols and education programs in place, it's a huge selling factor, or it's an advantage to somebody who wants to buy it. Yes, indeed.
And so then you start thinking too, you're like, wait a minute, I can teach other people this, it doesn't have to stay necessarily all of it within the business. The business has a structure and a way of going from start to finish. But there are skills that you're teaching clinicians that you can then translate. And there are many ways one could do that, right? That's right. You could teach at a university, you could put on your own courses, you could write a book, you could.
Yeah. Create an app. Yeah. That's right. You, and you've done a few of those things. And I have done a few of those things. And so yes, part of that is specifically with the TSA, the transferable skills analysis is there are apps out there that help with the process. They don't do it for you, but it helped with the process.
And in my experience, none of the ones that were available were reliable, so that led me to, I can't teach about this unless I can see, products out there that are reliable, which led to me wanting to develop my own app. Tell us about it. Tell us about the job. It actually I got really lucky, if that's a good way to look at it, is we use the National Occupational Classification or the NOC. Here in Canada. Here in Canada. Most OTs know about that already.
And that's a database that's used to describe jobs. And so we've always used this for transferable skills analysis. And so my idea was I was going to build an app to do a search of the NOC. But then just as I was starting the app, the NOC changed its entire way of classifying jobs and describing them. So I got lucky there in a way that now the new app is brand new. There's nothing else that does this yet, which is super lucky.
It also meant that I had to do a lot of figuring out how we were going to use that, the new structure in the NOC. So I had to adapt my way of doing the assessments. Also, then there's a gap too in people going, ah, they're disoriented. I don't know how to use the NOC anymore. That's right. You're then also providing a thing that helps them navigate it. That's right. Exactly. Beautiful timing. Do you know that this, isn't there a saying about luck only finds you in action?
that you have to be already in motion to get that lucky. That's right. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I had already committed to building an app with the developers, because I don't have those skills. And then like within the first month we shifted because I went, Oh, we can't do it that way. We should do it this way. And now that it's there, it's funny because I am coming up with some resistance.
And, all my good intentions of putting it out there, the people who have been using the old way of using the NOC have been saying, we don't do it that way. We don't do it this new way. We do it this old way. There's always the old way. So there's some challenges in being, I suppose it would be a trailblazer in some ways, but yeah, It's not easy. I think I always think about trailblazing as hacking your way through the jungle with a machete, right?
It's resistance and resistance and oh shoot, I went down the wrong way. Yes, exactly. I still don't feel I've gone down the wrong road, but I totally get that having seen the machete action in real life. Oh my. And it's not good for everybody, right? that's right. You're innovating, you're developing technology. There's always going to be people who are like, nope, I like the way I've always done it. I'm comfortable there. That's right. Perfect. You are not my customer. That's right. Exactly.
Yeah. And I'm sure that you find that same thing for you with the work that you're doing with OTs in that, the people are drawn to you because they want change. Even though they say they want change, I'm just going to imagine that sometimes they think they want it, but it's really hard to change. Sometimes they don't know what needs changing. I find that's the challenge with my ACTivate Vitality stuff. So often the thing they're seeking is not the thing they need.
so often I find, that, my niche is OT, or OT assistants, I support OT assistants, I support PTs and social workers, but mostly it's OTs who come. And generally they're business owners who are stuck in a pattern of some sort. And in that stuckness, usually there's some self doubt. There's some, uncertainty, there's some fear of failure, some overworking perfectionism, like those are some of the themes that are pretty common in the people that I support.
And often the solutions they're looking for as achievers who want to do it right is more clinical education, more certifications, more that sort of thing, where the thing that's going to get them feeling different about things in unstuck is, it's actually more of an inside job and so I'm really talking about that intersection between personal and professional development, where that high achiever who's working too much is Oh, no. Like I need something different.
Yes. Trying to convince people of or help people identify when they're ready, that here is actually where the potential is. The struggle probably is, and then the rest will work itself out once you work on this. Yeah, And you would use your counseling skills to get people to figure that out, right?
Yeah, which is tricky over the internet with just easy if I can get somebody on a call, but sometimes people are spending a lot of money on direct business coaching or clinical education that isn't going to work.
I'm really just dealing with the place that they're stuck and yeah, but I just, I need to keep showing up and being myself, And that's all I do is, some in the last batch of clients who just joined in October, I think at least four of them said they've been watching and waiting for one, two, three and four years, and just, they needed to be ready. Yeah, absolutely.
it's just like motivational interviewing, a type of, intervention that we can use is you have to be ready and you have to identify the need yourself. Exactly. Yeah. Anyway, you've done something I think I really admire because you're doing. You're helping the profession by helping OTs, and you're helping OTs by doing, just being an OT. Which ironically, I can't call it OT though. Because if the OTs that I'm supporting are outside of where I'm allowed to practice, it's not allowed to be OT.
Oh man. Do you know what? You still use your OT skills. I can't ever not not. Honestly, I use my OT skills when I'm shuffling the driveway or when I'm talking to someone on the bus or my OT brain doesn't ever shut off. And so we navigate ethically through the systems that we are with. I think that regulation is important and I'm proud to be a regulated health professional. I don't want to jeopardize that.
And if I can be serving the profession in a way that's ethical and I'm drawing some clear lines where I can, and keep checking in on that, then I think I'm doing a good thing. I think you are. And, you never turn your OT brain off. You use it with your kids, you use it with their teachers, you use it when you're in the grocery store and you're, trying to organize yourself to be efficient. So yeah.
And it's that, when I'm sure that when you set up your practice and started moving into the, work with other therapists and that sort of group stuff, you probably didn't really know that it was going to work. I had no idea. Actually, I had a different concept in mind, right? And I think that's a kind of the whole thing about that hacking your way with the machete trailblazing is that you have to take some steps forward and Learn what's there.
Sort of like even me showing up at that meeting of these med legal OTs and going, I'm starting in private practice. I don't even know what to do. Like I needed to get a sense of the environment, right. and what is needed and what people are looking for and what people are paying for and then make the next best decision and the next best decision. And similarly with these out of the box things that aren't in our clinical practice, Okay.
You identified a need for, there was a gap in this tool missing. Okay, I'm going to go about figuring this out. Oh, the landscape changed because the resource that the primary resource. Oh, okay, great. Like we can adapt. We're good at adapting, and figuring it out as we go. And we iterate, we evolve, we shift, we change, and we respond by being in tune.
Yeah. and that, like I say, that same thing happened with my project is I was getting feedback from people and then I saw that things were shifting and you just have to go with it. Yeah. Another thing that just came to mind. As we're talking is, because I know people are going to be listening to this, and this is something that I heard you say that you did, is you surround yourself with people who can be supportive of your goals.
And that might be other OTs, but that could also be a business center, business consultant. if you want to develop an app, get the people who, you've got to talk to the techy people, because they, I know you spend a lot of money on those things, but there's also funding programs out there that can help with all of that. And so it does it, like you say, it's that hacking your way through.
But if you get aligned with people, for me in Nova Scotia, we have the Center for Women in Business and they have business advisors, but they also have programs for people who are developing technology based businesses. And so I squeezed in there because it was all online and it was a different way of providing education. And I got a wealth of information from them on how to run a business, even though I'm running a business for 20 some odd years. It's a different kind of business.
And, I don't know how to get to the customers that I need to get to. And they set me up with people, I don't know how to market myself. And they set you up with somebody who can teach you how to do that. And in that case for the Center for Women in Business, it's all free. Yeah. It's government funded then that you get this benefit. And in addition, they probably know about the grants and things that you should be applying for. Exactly.
Yeah. And they can give you ideas of how to, apply for grants. And I even went to them when I said I was looking for a tech company and they gave me suggestions. They didn't say who to use, but gave me suggestions on how to find somebody. And, yeah, just surrounding yourself with the right people, I think is really important. Yeah. When you're trying something that's new and different, especially because it's not, the ground has not been laid out for you.
And I don't know if you find this with yours is, one of the things that I'm finding is that because I'm going to be marketing this across Canada is the privacy rules are slightly different in each of the provinces. Yeah, and I found, so through my contacts, not a very direct route, but, you go this way and then turn this way and then turn that way, and I'm using my hands here to show that, I found a lawyer who's, knows all about privacy all across Canada.
Yeah. And so she can give me the guidelines on how to set up my privacy policies and my standards and what's expected. Finding all of those people can sometimes feel like hacking, but you know, you just gotta, you gotta hack a little bit. It's, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Bite at a time.
Yeah. And asking lots of questions, which can feel vulnerable when you've got this novel idea that sometimes people can get into a bit of a scarcity mode that if I tell people somebody's going to steal my idea. And it's important to be cautious, but at the same time, you got to talk to people to find out who the experts are, who you need to talk to next. That's right. Yes, that's right. And it's a balance in business decisions that you make.
And now I'm sounding more like a business person than an OT, but it's okay. I'm both. Well, yeah, and that's the amazing thing is I've been in business for 24 years. That's a really long time. You learned a few things. Yeah. And when we started, you know, 24 years ago, no idea what we were doing. you just see where the work is and go that way and just keep doing it. But then that's evolved into learning, wanting to fill gaps, like there is no cognitive job demands analysis out there.
That is a gap we've been working on, isn't it? That's right. And that's how we know each other and, how it started that, and, again, get that group of people together because it's, it, you can't do it in isolation. So what Ruth's talking about is that Ruth and I first met, I think it was around five years ago, would you say, or was it a little longer? I think we, the very first meeting was in 2017, maybe 2018.
And we were met as a kind of a bigger group of people who were all seeing this gap that we are, we have lots of tools to assess people, and their functional abilities. We have tools to assess physical demands of jobs, but when it came to matching people with job, people's functional abilities with their jobs, when it came to cognitive, specifically cognitive demands of jobs, but also as we got got a little further down the line, we're recognizing that it's not just a gap in cognitive demands.
Job demands, it's sensory, it's social, it's behavioral, it's psychological, it's stress tolerance, like so many things came up as we go about, rating jobs in, a somewhat inconsistent way from each other, right? But we're all doing our best with the tools that are available. Many of us have been using the City of Toronto, which gives some questions that are helpful, right? But at the same time, nothing's been standardized and we're all doing this differently.
So a couple of different OTs might go about seeing about a job fit between a person with a disability Any, maybe it's long COVID, like COVID didn't exist when we first met, right? And maybe it's, but it's cognitive, like it could be mild cognitive impairment and people are just going, I can't focus quite as well. And a neuropsych assessment isn't necessarily going to tell the story for whether or not this person can do their job.
it's these little kind of matches and mismatches with how their fatigue is, how their migraine is, how their vision is how their pain is and how does that impact their ability to then do the job? But how do we have a good summary of the job? Not just a go check it out, hear what the employee says the job is and the manager says the job is.
So we ended up over time narrowing down to a group of a handful of us who've been started meeting once a week to build this tool, to help us, summarize job demands. Cognitive, behavioral, and sensory job demands is how we've labeled it. it's been a big job. it's another big job. And again, it's that, one bit at a time. And that's it. Meeting weekly, and not doing a whole lot of extra work in between.
We do now, but, back at the beginning, we really only did the work while we were meeting and brainstorming and, we just did it and we were very methodical about it, and I think that's just knowing that we can't move on to the next part until we've done that, hash out what is the problem, then hash out what are we looking at. And then how we assess that. And we spent a lot of time on how are we going to assess these things. And, yeah, I think it turned out pretty well so far.
The part where we are right now with the COBS JDA, that's the name of our tool that we've built, is we're working on some research. Can you describe where we are for the research for those who are listening and interested? So right now we're at a stage where we're getting feedback from, users. So people who would be, doing the assessment, but also people who would be buying the assessment and people who would be using it as a tool.
Stakeholders like employers or, lawyers, plus, clinicians who would actually be doing the assessment. And we've broken it into three groups. And so each of them have different ways of reviewing the assessment tool and then providing feedback. and so right now we're almost done collecting all of that feedback from our test group. We're just looking for a few more, clinicians. I think to complete that first phase of reviewing a report and, and looking at the tool itself to see if it's usable.
And it's a validating it right now, and seeing if people would use it. And if it's, if people agree with how we've set it up, it's the kinds of feedback that we're looking for right now. And then we'll take that and do some improvements and test it a little bit more and, which is that process that we were talking about, right?
How we've approached businesses, how we've approached offering different services and, we'll put a link in the show notes too, if people wanted to learn more about that, but it's Cognitive demands analysis. ca for Canada. And we call it, actually my partner calls it our cross country checkup because we're from all the way from here in Nova Scotia, right out to BC It was a lifeline through the lockdowns too, right?
Where we were so isolated and it was so heartening to be working on something that was future oriented, that was making use of this downtime. And then, but this check in, okay, how are things in BC? How are things in Alberta? How are things in Ontario? The middle provinces. We don't have anybody in Saskatchewan or Manitoba. How are things in Quebec? But it was, yeah. And then you and the Maritimes and sharing those experiences.
A lot of it was that building connection in our team in the beginning too. Yeah. And having the lockdowns actually gave us more opportunity to meet and that's where we did a lot of our work because we had the time. A lot of our other work sort of slid to the side. Absolutely. I think there's a common theme here too of embracing technology but that feels really daunting to a lot of people thinking about building technology because technology becomes outdated, technology is outdated.
causes us headaches, but ultimately, it's a beautiful way to reach many people and now that I feel like now that AI has exploded in the last year or so, it's become much more in people's hands in the last year. There's just this almost like a tsunami that's overwhelming when we think of tech. How do you feel about it all?
it's interesting that you ask about that because what I approach the tech and the technical people who do the building in the same way that I would approach, an OT assistant or a wheelchair technician. I want something that does this. And I don't care how you build it, because I don't know how any of that works. But as long as it does this for me, I want it to go get information, bring it back to me, allow me to adjust it, and then allow me to choose how I'm going to do my reverse search.
And they did that, and and, They'd try something and say, nah, quite like that. Just a little more to the left or, just like you would with anything else as an OT, I want something, I want, a spoon that is angled just this way. And, that's going right back to grassroots OT, and somebody would build it for you. And so that's, you're the expert in what you want to see in the end. And that's how I approach it. You don't have to know, You don't have to know what the tech is.
You have to know how to find some people to talk about this and go, this is what I'm looking for. I don't even know what that end product looks like. let's talk about it. That's right. And I don't need to know, I've learned a lot about technology and how to ask questions and, how to frame things, for people, and and I've learned also about some of the background needs. That are there, like how systems work, we can do it this way, but we can't do it that way.
And so I would have to adapt, how I got the information out. And also working with design people, it needs to be, designed in a way that's friendly for people and easy to navigate. And they don't always think about that. some of those things, yeah, that user interface is important for us because we're thinking about the person interacting with it. And so absolutely we can collaborate and fine tuning what we want that to be.
Absolutely. So yeah, that's how I approached it is, I wanted to learn, but I don't have to, I'm an OT. And I'm really good at being an OT. So I don't need to also know how to do to build technology. I also don't know how to do accounting. That's why you seek somebody else out to help you. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Because we, OTs are such good DIYers. That's where we go first, right? And we need to start. Start there, right?
Like you're not going to just start your business and go, Oh, I'm going to hire a giant web developer. I'm going to we need to start playing with some things, but there comes a point where I remember with my planner, actually, I was showing, somebody came here the other day and I showed her, I had bought a big coil binding machine because I was going to make these things. I even got really curious about. Like binding, like stitch binding too. Like more as a, I love to do things with my hands.
I love to create. I love to make pottery and garden and that sort of thing. And I never had a vision of stitch binding all of these things myself, but I was like, I want to play with, what do I want this to look and feel like? I wanted to build something with my hands. And then somebody pointed me to Hey, it's only a couple dollars a planner. If you wanted to print them on Amazon, I'm like, shoot. Okay. Absolutely.
Which again, goes back to surrounding yourself with people who know about this, because there's somebody else has done it. You're not the first person, even though you feel like a trailblazer. You're not the first person to set up. It's maybe it's that, that your certain activity or your certain technology that's new and awesome and makes you feel really great, but you're not the first person to write a book or to put something on, publish something or to work with Developers.
So there are people who know how to do that. There are. Yeah. We don't have to do it all ourselves. That's right. And you talk to them about it. And I can say a lot of this time, a lot of the time, it's somebody, I reached out to you and I very first said, I think I'm thinking about publishing this. what do you do? you gave me lots of good feedback yeah, I reached out to a couple of other people cause you need to get different perspectives.
I've seen lots of videos about you though, in doing the that reflective practice. Yeah. And so in Alberta, actually, it's in a lot of our regulatory stuff. I see you come up as I do different searches. I go, Oh, that's right. I know her. So yes, that's, I'll talk for a second about that because that's going to be another education program that I'm going to put out there is when I did my master's, it was a post professional master's.
I was living in Kuwait when I started and, I wanted to learn more about how to be more client centered. And so, when you're doing a master's, you boil something down to a small, you get more and more focused as you do your planning. And what I ended up doing was a, education group with a small group of OTs, and we used reflective practice principles for, to teach ourselves how to become more client centered. And so through that, I developed some ideas of how to be a reflective practitioner.
. And then I presented at CAOT one year. I presented at a couple of national conferences, and then the Alberta Association of OTs, contacted me. Boy, it was quite a long time ago now, probably 10 years ago, and, asked me to do a couple of one day workshops. And so I did, I developed workshops. So again, you go, Oh, do I even know how to do this, but you just do it. And you put it out there and you get the feedback. And then I was asked again to do, I have done a couple of those.
And then I did some webinars in the last six months or so, for a completely, not even OTs, like another health profession. And so what I've decided to do is to make a sort of a one hour Take care. Webinar on Reflective Practice for Health Professionals, and so that I take people through the history and of reflective practice and how it came to be, and then some different exercises for people to do that they can do on their own, and then come back to the lessons. That I'm going to put together.
So yeah, you take something that you know about, people are interested, Yeah. Yeah. You find a way. I feel like that, I want to talk for a minute about the value of reflective practice in being a practitioner. But I think there, that, that little point of, that once you know how to, almost like a container to be able to sell products and services. You can fill it with many things. And so being able to go, Oh, okay, people want to hear about this.
Okay. Like I know when I started talking about ACT, in OT places and online, people were really curious about ACT. Oh, okay, great. So I, thought I would, you I was going to do maybe a clinical course, but then I was like, no, not a clinical course. I ended up doing a clinical course, but, you start to just go, okay, yeah, now I can create this. I can create a webinar. I can sell that. I can, maybe do I want to do that once, see how it goes. Maybe that's something people can buy always.
And, it's very liberating to figure out how to create a product and sell it and then be able to use that process over and over again. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Cause now, now that I know about, how to set up the online program, it's easy. I just need the content and that content is just getting it out of my head. And, Yes, absolutely. And it doesn't have to be fancy, right? people want to hear you talk. People want to engage in conversation. People want to ask questions, right?
I wanted to just share that, I know here in Alberta, our Continuing Competency Program, I really love how they keep iterating it, and I was a part of, revising it several years ago.
It's been revised since, but a core thing is that we are, self directed learners, that we need to be accountable to ourselves also as, I need to be checking in on how my practice is, where are my gaps, where could I learn a little bit more, where could I do a little bit better, and that there's this sense of creating a safe space to question ourselves. And reflect on, how did that go? That was a bit of a challenge. Okay, I need to figure that out. That was what was challenging about that.
What could I learn from that? And it used to be, okay, tell us which competencies you need, you're not doing well enough at, is what it felt like. And it's been an evolution to, okay, if we can create some Safety in Reflection in Autonomous Learning, then I can choose my learning activities. So, is it meeting with another group of clinicians where we can really define what, client centered learning is? Is it following a structure for reflective practice?
Because truly me sitting down and journaling about my struggles and reflecting and discussing and seeing which other things that I can learn from that's much more powerful than signing up for the CEU course thing and just putting those things on play to check off some boxes. That's actually not necessarily going to contribute to And, so I really value this kind of spirit of reflective practice because it truly is at the core of getting curious and opening up to what's there. Absolutely.
Yeah. And, and part of that reflective practice process is noticing things. So it's very much in line with, the mindfulness practices that we see now. the mindfulness has been thousands of years, thousands of years. We just didn't in our Western world, really only started becoming more mainstream in probably the last 20, 25 years. And even then it's really blossomed in the last 10 years or so.
And, that whole, the whole thing, and we teach this to our clients, is that if you're feeling stressed, then, stop, take a breath. What's happening to me right now? and to do that analysis, with a clear head, helps us, it helps our clients to be able to get through their day. It will help us to be able to see where the problems are and where we can, move ahead. At the same time, it goes back to what you were talking about.
Sometimes we don't know what we don't know, so it's good to check in with other people. Yeah. So that doing it ourselves and being autonomous is great. We also need to have other people as sounding boards. And you do that, that part of your, business is being a sounding board and have, you know, setting up a safe space for OTs to do that.
Yeah. and, they may be more focused towards business issues, but It could be with anything with our clients, why isn't this bathtub bench not working properly or, just and just slowing our brains down because as you know , we're just, we just, especially in the public system, we tend to just go on super fast. You just need to get your work done. Yeah. And I find a private practice we, if we give ourselves the space.
Yeah. We can slow down and, and be more conscious of the decisions that we're making. Yeah. Yes. If we allow ourselves to. Some people just continue that busy, busy in their private practice to more, more, more, more, grow, grow, grow, grow. I gotta, crank it out. I've got to write 10 page notes. Who's reading your 10 page notes? does that serve? what's the best way to serve? while maintaining your professional responsibilities and doing what's effective.
But a lot of people stay in the, I've always done it this way. I even think about something like silly, like I remember working for AHS, like we had to use black pens. I don't think there's anything actually in our regulatory, anything that says we have to use black pens, but I think I bought the black pens when I first started my private practice. and so it is, it's good to pause and check in on what's necessary. What's effective? What's the goal? What's serving the goal with this client?
What's what are the needs? What can I revise? What can I change? And, and what's new out there, right? I found I've been using, an AI that helps me with my session notes. And it's been a game changer. It's the thing I've been wishing for for 20 years. And it's secure. And it's You know, like all of these things. And I've learned how to get it to write me a progress note, a progress report, which is amazing. And yeah, but we need to, we do need to pause and go, ah, this part's really not working.
And, whereas a lot of people tend to go, ah, like I'm not good at that. I don't want to even look at that. let's That's right. Or never take that kind of referral again or get away from distress, get away from places I'm not good enough. Like it's good to pause and check in and go, what could, what could change here?
Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of people shy away because things are challenging and, and you start to move through it and it's, it's been one, one thing in my career over 35 years is seeing it. people get stuck in just one way of doing things and I think that's really great for people who want to do that kind of work. That's never been my way of being. I like to do lots of different things. I like to learn about lots of different things. And so I don't just do vocational assessments.
I don't just do mental health. I don't just do medical legal. I want to do all of it. You're a very typical OT in that way, right? Many of us were drawn to OT because of the variety of things. Exactly. Yeah, that's right. and that's the, and taking those chances taking those referrals that you're not 100 percent confident with. I think that is where your bravery comes in. That's being just taking that deep breath can give you bravery. Yes. This is figureoutable. Yeah. What are my resources?
What are, where can I learn more? What can I figure out? We're OTs, and that's what we're good at, is problem solving, is finding out where are those barriers, assess the situation, are the barriers, where are the barriers coming from? Are they coming from the person? Are they coming from the environment? and what part of the environment? I see this in a lot of Facebook groups, but a lot of clinicians going, Ooh, I just got this referral for this. Where can I take a course on that?
And I often, think, no, go meet the client and see the situation. You may not need to take a course on that. You may go in and go, actually, we need to move this thing over an inch. There's the solution, right? Very often, solutions are practical, but you need to go in and assess the situation and go, okay, in context, this person in their environment. This element of their function that they're struggling with. Yeah, I can see the answer. It didn't need a course.
Yeah, we, you've already taken the course, you've learned to be an OT. And so we need to trust ourselves, that we're going to know what to do. And, I found that when I did international work, I was doing volunteer work in some really needy areas, and people would ask, what are you going to do when you get there? And I'd say, I don't know. And they'd say, how am I going to know if I can do it? And I tell them, you know what, you'll go.
and you'll see what needs to be done and it'll be obvious to you because you're an OT or because you're a physio or because you're a speech therapist, you're going to know exactly what needs to be done. Our magic is in how we approach that knowing.
that's where all this training comes in and it seems, I think people discount their own value in that very often where that just seems easy like they're like that can't be valuable, but it is, it's our way of problem solving and approaching situations is the unique thing. So go do that. Exactly.
Yeah, we can't just go in and be rash about it, but, but, go in with that, mindful brain and be aware of what's happening and not think that, ahead of time, what needs to be done, because we always have to get the feedback from the clients, from the customers, from, to see what the environment actually is. And it's not very client centered to go in before anything and think you've got it all figured out. I know. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Can I ask you my last questions? Of course.
Yes. what does being brave mean to you? Being brave means to me is doing something, even if you're not 100 percent sure that you can do it. I don't know if other people have used that same kind of a definition. I'm actually planning to do a compilation of all the responses and that one's going to be tricky because it's actually very similar response that everybody gives slightly different variation on words, but that's, it's the truth.
Yeah. And to me, being, brave is to step out of the mainstream, to try something different when you're not sure of what's going to happen. Like when you can't see around the corner. The only way you can see around the corner is by taking a couple steps, right? That's right. Yeah. It's okay. You can always go back. That's beautiful. I feel like that's the little soundbite right there. That's great. And what's something brave that you've done recently?
Boy, it's tough because I may be a person who's been pretty rash all my life, but because I make calculated risks. I think something brave recently that I've done, it just did putting together this whole app thing is that's brave in that. It's been a lot of work, and I can't even overestimate the amount of work that it's been for, getting an app together and an education program and now it has to be marketed, which is, another hill to go over.
Hey, you're doing it right now and it just seems like fun. Persisting and being, so being persistent, I think is being, that's what I'm doing now. That's the BRAVE thing is just, I know that it's going to be okay. It will be, however it turns out in the end, it's going to be okay. You'll make it if it's not okay, it's not the end. That's right. How would you like to see other OTs get a little bit more brave?
I would like to see OTs being more brave in, as we just said, being, being confident in their core skills, and not underestimating the value that we have, as OTs in the world. Everybody can use a little bit of OT. Even OTs can use a little OT, right?
I think taking on some of those non traditional roles, looking around and seeing what needs to be done, looking at more vulnerable populations, because in general, we the least vulnerable people tend to get the most attention, I'm afraid, and I've seen that in the world. I would like to see people do more of that, do more of working in our own communities with vulnerable populations, but also in the big world.
You know, I mentioned that I have done some volunteer work in developing countries and, and in some risky areas. Did I ever feel unsafe doing that? No I didn't. Because it was a methodical, calculated thing to do, you know, and trusting that what, like we just said, whatever happens, it's going to be what happens. And that's okay. And you trust in your resourcefulness for handling what happens. Absolutely. What about you? What have you done lately that's brave? Hmm, sorry.
Not everybody turns my own questions on me. I did not plan for that. Sorry. No, this is good. This is good. Ooh, something. Oh, it's coming up that feels brave. I am going to be teaching, a module at the U of A, to the Occupational Therapy students, the, this spring, and that feels really, I'm quite nervous and excited at the same time. Like, I'm very willing to take this on. I agreed to it, but it feels so different. So when I go and do a webinar online or I write stuff.
Something an article or a blog or something like that. There's this sort of under understanding that I haven't published this anywhere formal. I haven't, you know, that this is one person's take on what I see or observe and I'm putting my own stamp on it. And so there's something very different about put doing this in an academic setting where I feel like I've gotta have it right. That feels a little bit intimidating. And I mean, I think I don't have to have it any more right than anywhere else.
But, what's the reason they've brought me in is because I am doing some trailblazing, right? So the module I'm going to be teaching is, on entrepreneurship and coaching and it's basically about sharing what I've learned along the way and, and being able to, and I talked to them about this sense of, ah, I can't necessarily find evidence for everything that I'm going to share.
And they said, no, that's why we're bringing in subject matter experts, people who have experience because it's that experience. And that's why we have these modules where there are people out there doing the things who can share. What they've learned and what they know, where the resources are and where you're not sure you say you're not sure. And so that feels like it feels very brave to have said yes to that. That's that is brave. Academia is a tough world.
Yeah. And I think there, the, that my little tiny segment of it is small and low pressure, so at this point, And if it gives you any encouragement, they asked you because you are a subject matter expert, and you probably know way more about this. You certainly know way more about your experience than anybody else there. About my experience, yes, it's true. It's true. And hopefully that's comforting. Thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate that.
So for people to reach out to you, people who are interested, in, using your app or reaching out to you more generally, how should they connect with you? probably the easiest is to, is by email ruth at cornerstoneot. com. but we can put that in the, in our website. and then I can give you links to the education program that's is up and running. It's just not fully launched yet. And then the app, so that people can find out more about it if they want to.
and can, if they look on the, education site, there will be more things coming up there. right now there's just that one program. What are they called? Give us the names of your education, site and app. Okay. So the education is, it's based out of Kajabi, but it's, a transferable skills analysis online education. Very descriptive. Very descriptive. Very simple. Very to the point. And the app that goes with that is the Transitions Vocational Assessment Service.
And that app really just is a way of organizing your assessment process, and it helps to search the NOC for skills, but also job matches. Thanks. And will this be something that will be helpful to OTs doing this type of work outside of Canada? It could be eventually. At this point, it's being just marketed to Canadian OTs because it's using the Canadian database.
However, the principles, again, going back to the principles of the assessment process are the same no matter where you are, whether you're in the UK or Australia or the United States. And, and so the, using the app is just one very small part. And, so the education program looks at how do you actually analyze the data and some guidelines on how to do that? And how do you do your interview with your client? And so it, it could be helpful to anybody.
Who wants to do that kind of work, there would just probably need to be a little bit more work on the user's end to, figure out how they're going to do it with the systems that they have, like the Dictionary of Occupational Titles in the United States. They could always use the Canadian app, because it's still going to give results. It just might not match up exactly with how your country, defines occupations. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. The CAOT conference this year is in Edmonton. I know.
Are you coming to share your new things with people? Goodness. I should submit, shouldn't I? I think our submission deadline has passed. but maybe you could come anyways. And you were, you handed out stickers like a mad woman at, I did. For the BRAVE OT Podcast when we were there. There are lots of ways to connect. Yes. Yes. And there are tons of ways of connecting. And, I might even at that point set up a booth, In the trade show.
It feels like we were just recently in Halifax together at the last one. It seems too early to be planning the next one. It may have been a little subconscious way of my mind telling me to slow down and not do too much right now. And it's hard to know this far in advance what, yeah, what you're ready to, which stage you're at and what's needed, or will you be overwhelmed with too much and you don't want to be bringing a lot more people in just yet until you've Figured out that next thing.
Yeah, exactly. Thank you. So grateful that you came and had this discussion. I want to thank you for the opportunity to see and speak with you in your professional, area, because this is, it's always nice to see people do and they're. job Yeah, there is something about when you know people and you can see them in, in flow in like truly doing the thing that's they're meant to be doing it, it is, I always feel really uplifted so I really appreciate that in you as a friend and colleague.
And having known you, I knew that this was going to be easy. So it wasn't that brave to do it. No, Thank you. I really appreciate it. totally. Thank you. Thank you, the listener, for listening to The BRAVE OT Podcast. I would love to hear how Related to this episode, if there was anything interesting or great takeaways, please share it on social media, subscribe, give us a review. These things go a long way to reaching the people who need to hear these messages.
reach out to Ruth, if you have any questions about the things she's talked about, her links are in the show notes so that you can learn more about the Transitions Vocational Assessment Service and app. I'll also include a link to our CoBS-JDA website, so the Cognitive Behavioral and Sensory Job Demands Analysis tool that we've built. We're looking for participants to test and review the assessment outputs at this point.
We'd love to have you if you're a Canadian OT And last but not least, the ACTivate Vitality program is opening up in February for our next cohort to join us. So this is a community of OT business owners who support each other, collaborate, co conspire, co regulate, and create a sense of not being so alone in private practice. We often feel really siloed and on our own, and we can really get in our heads.
So the ACTivate Vitality community really supports us in building those core skills from acceptance and commitment therapy to be more grounded and mindful in our practices, in our work, in our lives. And we create community around this so that we can move forward in blazing some trails and doing the things that really matter, building businesses that create that sense of flow and satisfaction in our lives. So I will include a link to book a call with me.
That's the process for getting into the ACTivate Vitality program is booking a clarity call. As always, be BRAVE, OTs.