Welcome back to another episode of the Freedom Talks podcast, everybody. This is your host, Joe Ogden. And this week in the short podcast, what we're gonna talk about for this week as this podcast is gonna be released in April, which is occupational therapy month that we are celebrating here at Freedom. And something cool that we offer here at Freedom Physical Therapy even though our name says Freedom Physical Therapy Services, we do offer occupational therapy as well. And later this month, I'm going to be sitting down with one of our occupational therapists here, Adrian, who is an awesome OT.

And earlier this year, we talked with Marion Verplanke, who is also an occupational therapist here at Freedom. We talked, more posture and ergonomics, with Marion. And later this month, we're gonna be talking with Adrian more, just kinda more about what she does as the occupational therapist. And OT here at Freedom, especially in Fox Point, because we have two occupational therapists, Really, what we focus on with that type of treatment is people who are having any finger, hand, wrist, or shoulder dysfunction. And I think what's really cool with our OTs is they focus a lot on the upper extremity stuff.

Physical therapists also work with shoulders, we kinda go back and forth with the OTs, depending on what's going on with shoulders, is really cool because they just see things from a different lens. But they focus on the wrist, hand, and finger stuff, which for me, think as a physical therapist, it's really nice just to refresh on some of that stuff. You know, we've done, you know, evaluations for people that turn into potential occupational situations. But it's always nice just to kinda go back and forth and make sure that our skills are up to date. But I just wanna kinda go through, you know, kinda what occupational therapy is and and what they can treat and what they do and what some of the tools that we have here at Freedom to help people who may need to see an occupational therapist.

So, Adrianne and she'll talk about this more, but, she probably won't talk about as much as I want her to. So I've gotta toot her own horn a little bit and kinda get her going because she won't talk about herself because she's too modest and too nice. But Adrianne just finished her CHT, which is is I I can't believe she did it quite honestly. You know, pregnant with baby number three. She's got two other young kids at home, and she studied for a year for this test.

And to be a certified hand therapist, I I I I it's amazing that she did it quite honestly. You know, I look I have two kids now with a newborn at home and I don't know how she did it with being pregnant for a third. I mean, it's just crazy. She took this test that really has no study guide besides other people just kinda putting questions together based on the test and it was in this review group and came out and passed the test which which is just awesome. So she now being certified, I mean, she's really good at pretty much seeing everything in the hand, which again is just fantastic and and props to Adrian.

It really helps us at Freedom. So it's it's perfect that we're having this podcast here in April because not only are we celebrating occupational therapy, but celebrating her and and what she did and and now what she brings to the table and she's always brought to the table as a therapist, I think, is just just awesome. So occupational therapy itself, it's really a lot of it's focused on focusing on fine motor activities to help hand dexterity and making sure that, you know, we can use our hands and use them effectively. You know, with our technological age, there's a lot of quote unquote bad things we do with our hands and posture that can lead to pain, need to see an occupational therapist. And what we can help them with is making sure that we can eat with our hands, we can do office work, we can bathe and get dressed, we can do laundry, clean up the house, take part in leisure activities, which is a lot like physical therapy.

But looking at it from a different lens where physical therapy as a whole and not to generalize too much because we both are super skilled and there's a lot of education that goes into this. But physical therapy as a whole, a lot big gross movement, you know, looking at the legs, looking at the back. I mean, a lot of big upper and big movement picture where OT really gets into the fine nitty gritty stuff with the hand, wrist, and shoulder because that's it it's just a smaller movement compared to other stuff. So physical therapy, big movement picture, OT, fine movement picture and just making sure the body from a fine motor perspective works efficiently. Some of the things we're going to talk about with Adrian a little bit is kind of going through a little bit of carpal tunnel syndrome, arthritis, trigger finger, any tendonitis that also we can talk about some of the exercises that kind of go into it as well.

We also use our laser therapy, our class four laser, as well as our shockwave with a lot of wrist and shoulder patients as well as hand patients. I I just saw someone with wrist arthritis, that we use the shockwave on for, I believe, four or five sessions, and his wrist pain went away and he could barely move his wrist before. So motion got it better and pain went down. So there another tool that we have here, at Freedom is our Shockwave, which has worked out really good. Another thing that, we're gonna talk with Adrian about a little later this month with OT is how to have proper hand placement and workstation set up to make sure that we optimize how we move and make sure that we can decrease pain.

A lot of that stuff is more in Adrian's wheelhouse because she sees it all the time and kind of picking her brain a little bit on some of the things that she sees that lead to, you know, kind of carpal tunnel syndrome or people that may also come in for, you know, carpal tunnel symptoms and maybe it's coming from their neck. And that's where Adrienne and Marion both are really good about, you know, kind of going through, checking all the boxes and being like, yeah. You know, I I think this is more so coming from her neck. I mean, I've had a couple patients now in the couple years that Adrian and I have worked together where she's working on a patient with, you know, wrist pain and then she all of a sudden, we were talking in the back about, you know, these are the symptoms that are going on. Adrian says, I think it's coming from her neck.

Sure enough, I do an evaluation for this patient and, yeah, symptoms are coming from their neck. Adrian is so good about that, making sure and checking all the boxes to make sure patients are seeing the right people. So this month, celebrating our occupational therapist, celebrating what Freedom also offers at Freedom as well as we have OT up in Grafton. We are trying to expand our occupational therapist to be at all locations, but right now, as of 2025 in the spring here in April, we've got it for sure in Fox Point as well as Grafton. So the next episode with Adrian, we're gonna talk a little more about what we offer at Freedom and more about what occupational therapy is and, you know, kinda some of the differences between physical therapy and occupational therapy even though in our private practice setting here, it really overlaps a lot and we we do see back and forth.

But there is some subtle differences and some important differences both professionally, and ethically that we do here at Freedom, to make sure that patients are seeing the right people. So look forward to the next episode in the next couple weeks here with Adrian, and thanks again everybody for following along with Freedom. Thanks for supporting Freedom Physical Therapy. We're very thankful for each and every one of our patients and people that support us in the community where it's it's a blessing and a privilege to serve you. Thanks again for listening everybody, and we'll see everybody in the next episode.