OT Student Essential Functions
Point Loma Nazarene University MSOT program’s student Essential Functions are the aptitudes and abilities required to participate in the program. These essential functions are based on practice guidelines from the American Occupational Therapy Association. Students must demonstrate compliance and ability to follow these essential functions in the classroom, laboratory, and during community and fieldwork clinical experiences. The use of a surrogate or trained intermediary will not be acceptable in clinical situations because the student’s judgment is then being mediated by someone else’s power of selection and observation. In general, additional time will not be granted for timed testing of clinical skills.
Prior to beginning coursework and/or fieldwork, students must identify whether they can complete the essential functions with or without accommodations. If accommodations are needed, please reach out to the PLNU Educational Access Center.
Cognitive Skills Required – Students will need to:
- Be a self-motivated learner who actively engages and maintains attention to course readings, classroom lectures and labs, for up to 8 hours per day.
- Process and recall multiple concepts simultaneously during simulated and “real” experiences with clients.
- Manage and prioritize demands from multiple courses.
- Manage time effectively in the clinical setting to meet productivity expectations.
- Identify, recall, analyze, and solve abstract concepts independently using multiple sources of information.
- Ensure client safety during lab, community, and fieldwork experiences.
- Gather needed information from multiple sources and personnel to provide safe, and quality patient care.
- Reflect and self-evaluate professional, technical, and personal skills that contribute positively to client outcomes.
Motor Skills – Students will need to:
- Assume and maintain a variety of positions including sitting, standing, and moving from position to position, for long periods of time, which are required for classroom, laboratory, and clinical experiences.
- Handle and manipulate various sizes and weights including:
- Lifting and transferring patients up to 50 lbs
- Carrying items of at least 50 lbs
- Guarding patients during functional mobility training on level surfaces/uneven surfaces/ramps/stairs while balancing yourself.
- Pushing and pulling to provide resistance and to assist in maneuvering patients up to 100 lbs of force.
- Move quickly from one position to another position.
- Respond quickly to emergency situations by lifting/pushing/pulling patients, applying force to perform CPR, and assisting with transporting patients.
- Manipulate objects/equipment/persons of various sizes, shapes, temperatures, smells, and textures during labs and client interventions.
Sensory Skills – Students will need to:
- Have sufficient (visual, auditory, tactile and olfactory) sensory processing to perceive information provided in the classroom, lab, and during client interventions.
- Accurately observe (using visual, auditory, tactile, and/or olfactory senses) a client’s medical condition, including the client’s affect.
Auditory Skills – Students will need to:
- Hear and react to alarms, emergency signals, timers, cries for help, phones, pagers, overhead page.
- Hear and respond to oral communication.
Vestibular Skills – Students will need to:
- Monitor one’s own position in space to maintain balance and posture.
- Tolerate changes in head position during intervention.
- Tolerate changes in elevation such elevators, escalators.
Communication Skills – Students will need to:
- Speak and write clearly during all communications with clients, their caregivers, and other healthcare professionals.
- Communicate effectively through written and electronic media.
- Adhere to professional standards (APA format) when writing papers.
- Demonstrate an awareness of self and others during conversations.
- Comprehend complex concepts in the literature.
- Summarize complex information into easy to understand terms.
Emotional Skills: Students will need to:
- The student must possess emotional stability for full utilization of their intellectual abilities, the exercise of good judgment, and the prompt completion of all responsibilities attendant to both didactic studies and client interventions.
- Accurately perceive changes in other’s emotions and behaviors including facial expressions, moods, and activity level.
- Maintain composure and emotional stability during periods of high stress and emergency situations.
- Cope with a variety of clinical situations, which may involve pain, grief, death, communicable diseases, blood and body fluids, and or toxic substances.
- Display professionalism through appropriate presentation of oneself.
- Maintain personal well-being to not jeopardize the health and safety of others and self.
- Demonstrate honesty, integrity, professionalism, and ethical behavior according to the American Occupational Therapy Association’s Code of Ethics.
- Use therapeutic communication, such as clarifying, coaching, facilitating, and touching in appropriate ways.
- Advocate for the benefit of your client with other inter-professional team members.
- Recognize when others do or do not understand his/her written and/or oral communication and modify communication accordingly.
- Work collaboratively and effectively as a small group member as well as a health team member.
- Demonstrate sufficient interpersonal skills to relate positively with people across society, including all ethnic backgrounds, economic levels, gender, gender identification, sexual orientations, disabilities and belief systems.
- Possess compassion and concern for others; interest in and motivation for service and integrity.
- Accept constructive criticism and respond by appropriate modification of behavior.
Accommodations:
Students with a documented disability may request disability accommodations by contacting the Educational Access Center.