Occupational Therapy

Level I Fieldwork Clinics

Kalamazoo clinics

Adult Clinic

Unified Clinics
1000 Oakland Dr
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5361 USA

The Adult Clinic serves adults who have neurological diagnoses such as cerebral vascular accidents and traumatic brain injuries; orthopedic conditions such as knee and hip replacements, fractures and other chronic orthopedic conditions; and cognitive impairments such as dementia. Additionally, the adult clinic will also serve individuals with psychological conditions such as depression, developmental delay and autism. The focus of the adult clinic is to provide skilled evaluation and intervention from a holistic perspective to assist clients in achieving their highest level of safety, occupational performance, and well-being. Through an extensive evaluation process, the adult clinic helps to determine the client’s potential for rehabilitation and independent living. Intervention is designed to improve independent living skills, motor skills and cognitive skills through individual sessions that target the specific client’s needs.

Adults Doing Life Skills Clinic

1000 Oakland Dr
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5361 USA
email: berit.miller@wmich.edu

Adults Doing Life Skills Clinic serves adults who have diagnoses such as mild, moderate, and severe intellectual impairments, cerebral palsy, brain injury, epilepsy, autism and other developmental disorders. The focus of the clinic is to provide meaningful occupations for adult consumers, while maintaining and increasing functional skills. Many of the consumers are in wheelchairs, are nonverbal, have limited functional movement and/or are incontinent. Individual evaluation and treatment includes mobility, feeding and swallowing assessment and treatment, sensory modulation, range of motion, attention, and activities of daily living. Through evaluation, the clinic helps to determine functional independence levels. Intervention is designed to promote independence in activities of daily living, improve sitting and standing balance, increase PROM and AROM, improve feeding skills, fine and gross motor skills, decrease drooling, develop sensory diets for sensory modulation, increase communication, and promote leisure skills.

Children's Trauma Assessment Center

1000 Oakland Dr
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5361 USA
Phone: (269) 387-7073
Fax: (269) 387-7050
Email: chhs-ctac@wmich.edu

The Southwest Michigan Children's Trauma Assessment Center recognizes that exposure to potentially traumatic events can affect child functioning within the cognitive, affective, behavioral and physiological domains. The goal of the center is to assess the impact to children following exposure to traumatic events or suspected fetal alcohol exposure. The target population is children, ages three months to 17 years, entering foster care due to experiences of child abuse or neglect. Children with other traumatic experiences are also considered for assessment.

Finicky Feeders Program

1000 Oakland Dr
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5361 USA

The Finicky Feeders Program serves children who have a variety of medical diagnoses such as autism spectrum disorder, sensory processing disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and neuromuscular disorders that may be associated with feeding. This clinic treats children ages one to 12 years of age. Children served are those with food aversions, food refusal, difficulty with texture transition, self-limited diets, oral incoordination and/or disruptive mealtime behaviors. Children seen at this clinic eat as few as ten different foods and some refuse entire food groups further threatening their nutritional status. The focus of the Finicky Feeders Program is to help children who are medically stable with food selectivity increase their mealtime repertoires to include a healthy variety of foods from each food group. Children also learn mealtime behaviors that make family mealtime more successful at home. Parents are taught strategies to help their child develop healthy eating behavior for life.

Kalamazoo Regional Psychiatric Hospital

1312 Oakland Dr
Kalamazoo MI 49008
Phone: (269) 337-3000

The Kalamazoo Regional Psychiatric Hospital clinic is an acute-care psychiatric facility that serves adults and older adults with serious mental illness including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, major depressive disorder, chemical dependency/substance abuse, and dementia including Alzheimer’s type. The hospital also provides court-ordered forensics programming for patients who have serious mental illness and have been deemed either “not guilty by reason of insanity” or “incompetent to stand trial” in a legal court. The focus of the clinic is to provide patients the opportunity to socially participate in meaningful activities and to learn and practice functional skills to improve quality of life and prepare for transition to community living.

Pediatric Clinic

1000 Oakland Dr
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5361 USA

The Pediatric Clinic serves children who have diagnoses such as sensory processing disorder, ADHD, autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, developmental delay, fine and gross motor dysfunction, fetal alcohol syndrome, and cognitive deficits. We treat children six months to 18 years of age. We provide evaluation and design client-centered intervention directed towards improving handwriting skills, motor skills, increasing sustained attention to task, increasing independence in self-care like grooming and eating, and improving safety awareness as they move through the environment and/or learn to interact socially. The focus of the Pediatric Clinic is to allow children to develop greater success in occupations that are meaningful to them.

Skills for Living Clinic

1000 Oakland Dr
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5361 USA

The Skills for Living Clinic promotes mental health well-being through a group approach to treatment and serves clients’ ages 4 through young adult. Diagnoses include: ADHD, mood disorders, PTSD, Anxiety, FASD and ODD. The focus of the clinic is to teach individuals life skills that promote independent functioning within their daily environment, i.e. school, work and home. Common daily skills addressed at the clinic include meal preparation, self-regulation skills, creating and maintaining peer relationships, money management and self-care.

SOAR Clinic

1000 Oakland Dr
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5361 USA

The SOAR Clinic is a community based clinic focused on providing occupational therapy evaluation and treatment that serves early elementary children who are scoring significantly below benchmarks in literacy skills. Common diagnoses include ADHD, Learning Disabilities, and Autism Spectrum Disorders. The focus of the SOAR clinic is to increase literacy skills. Through evaluation, SOAR helps to determine each child’s potential for success in the school setting and throughout their academic career. Intervention is designed to address underlying issues that impair engagement in literacy curriculum. This clinic implements treatment plans and provides direct OT treatment during and after school program and during school.

Work-to-Work Program

1000 Oakland Dr
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5361 USA

The Work-to-Work Program serves young adults who have diagnoses such as autism, Asperger's syndrome, learning disability, cognitive impairment and other mental health disorders. The focus of the adult Work-to-Work Program is the development of higher-level independent living skills including work and appropriate workplace communication/interpersonal skills. Through evaluation, the program helps to determine the adult client’s potential for independent living and for employment. Intervention is designed to improve independent living skills and prevocational skills through participation in therapeutic social and task groups, one-on-one supervision during work activities and one-on-one sessions to target specific skill areas for the individual client

Grand Rapids clinics

Mel Trotter Ministries Clinic

225 Commerce Ave SW
Grand Rapids MI 49506

Phone: (616) 454-8249
Fax: (616) 771-4200
Email: chelsey.langley@wmich.edu

At the Mel Trotter Ministries Clinic, we serve infants and children in the childcare area of the women and children’s shelter. We carryout developmental screenings, standardized evaluations, design OT treatment programs specific to the child and family, and to collaborate and coordinate with existing community service providers. The goal of occupational therapy at Mel Trotter Ministries is to help individuals improve their health, productivity and vocational potential. Pediatric group sessions are also provided to the children whose developmental skills do not indicate the need for direct OT services. We also serve adults by teaching life skills to assist with independent living, to help individuals improve their health, improve productivity, or gain a skill to improve vocational potential and therefore, housing potential. These skills may include but are not limited to: activities of daily living, personal care, parenting/child care, energy conservation, joint protection, food preparation, money management, health awareness/management, public transportation, community reintegration, computer skills, resume writing skills and individualized pre-vocational training.

Pediatric Occupational Therapy Clinic at Calvin College

1810 East Beltline Ave
Grand Rapids MI 49546 USA
Phone: (616) 742-4840
Fax: (616)771-4200

The Pediatric Clinic at Calvin College offers occupational therapy services for children and their families. Our goal is to promote function and engagement at home, school, and play in all areas of a child’s development. We provide services to children with a variety of complex medical issues. Specific diagnosis may include, but are not limited to cerebral palsy and other neuromuscular disorders, developmental delays, autism spectrum disorders, traumatic brain injury, Down syndrome and other genetic disorders and sensory processing disorders. We offer a comprehensive evaluation and treatment for each child. Areas addressed in therapy are play based and may include self-care skills including feeding, dressing, and grooming, development of fine motor and visual motor skills, hand strengthening and coordination skills required for activities such as cutting with scissors, coloring, writing, buttoning and using feeding utensils, sensory-motor processing and pre-handwriting skills and handwriting skills.

Orthopedic Associates of Michigan Clinic

200 Ionia Ave SW
Grand Rapids MI 49503 USA
Phone: (616)742-4840
Fax: (616) 771-4200
Email: nancy.hock@wmich.edu

The Orthopedic Associates of Michigan Clinic helps people return to the activities of everyday life following an orthopedic disease or injury—whether that’s work, leisure, domestic life or community activities. We use education, exercise, activities, assistive technology, and adaptive devices to help people engage or re-engage in the activities that matter most to them. We help our patients accomplish tasks that will enhance their everyday life, we help modify their living and work environments to minimize limitations, and much more. Specific diagnosis may include, but are not limited to arthritis, fracture to upper quadrant, injury to shoulder, elbow, wrist and hand, tendon injuries, nerve compression, trigger finger, tendonitis and trauma/crush injury. Occupational therapy services offered on site include orthosis fabrication, splinting, quick cast of digits, manual therapy, therapeutic exercise, ultrasound, thermal modalities, electrical stimulation and activity modification.

Clinic focus: psychosocial and social factors

All level I fieldwork experiences (for OTD and OTA) will have the following ACOTE standard as one of the primary objectives for the course:

ACOTE Standard C.1.7: Ensure that at least one fieldwork experience (either level I or level II) must address practice in behavioral health, or psychological and social factors influencing engagement in occupation.

The primary focus of the occupational therapy process in these clinical experiences will be on the psychological and social factors impacting the occupational performance of the clients. OT students will learn how to address concerns related to psychological and social factors in their assessment and treatment care plans.

Every OT student will be assigned to one of the following clinics for their psychosocial fieldwork experience:

Level I Clinics that touch on psychosocial factors, but focus more on other factors include:

Adult Clinic
Adults with Intellectual Differences Clinic
SOAR Clinic
Pediatric Clinic
Pediatric Clinic at Calvin College
Orthopedic Associates of Michigan Clinic

Students must demonstrate specific clinical competencies in order to successfully complete level I fieldwork experience. Competencies include interpersonal skills, communication skills, commitment to learning, stress management, problem solving, effective use of time and resources, use of constructive feedback, effective use of time and resources, responsibility, critical thinking, professionalism, planning, guiding and documenting therapy. Students receive a letter grade for their level I fieldwork.

Western Michigan University’s ultimate goal of level I fieldwork is to help our students gain a foundational understanding of occupational therapy evaluation and treatment through direct interaction and hands-on experiences with clients.

Please view the fieldwork frequently asked questions page for more information.