-: I'm Angelica Fortunato, and I work
as a pediatric occupational therapist.
I work with kids from age birth to 21,
in an outpatient department of a hospital.
And basically my day-to-day goal is to
improve the skills kids need to function
through their daily activities,
and just to become more independent.
So the big one for children is just play,
so just being able to play appropriately.
Complete dressing tasks, self-feeding,
bathing, a lot of times we work with kids
on homework tasks, school things,
because that's a big part of their day as well.
Being in an outpatient department of a hospital,
the children come to us.
Usually the most common thing that I hear
is parents hear concern from school,
or maybe they notice that they weren't doing something
that their other siblings were doing,
so they usually see a doctor
and then the doctor refers them to us.
Usually the first few sessions is just
getting to know the child, it kind of is like investigating,
you have to kind of figure out what is going on
with the child, what they like, what they don't like,
how you can become their friend,
and then from there, you can work in
those daily life skill activities.
A lot of times you have to kind of make it interesting
because a lot of times, kids don't want to do
their homework, or their dressing tasks,
so you kind of have to make it playful and fun.
So really what I do all day
is kind of just play with kids.
So when you walk into my office,
it's like a big gym, we have slides, we have
a barrel that kids can roll in,
we have swings, we have like a big closet
full of toys so it's just kind of like
a big play session, but there's
always something behind, there's a purpose to it.
And it's very occupation-based.
So I'll work with the kids during the day
for about half hour to an hour for each session,
and the length of time that they're with us
really depends on their diagnosis,
their progress, and if they have any other services
outside of the hospital, so sometimes I'll see kids
for maybe four sessions, and then sometimes I'll see them
for a year, it just really depends on their situation.