Kaylee Munch – MOT, OTR/L – OT Faculty Profiles, USAHS
Kaylee Munch, MOT, OTR/L, is an occupational therapy faculty member at the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences (USAHS) campus in St. Augustine, Florida. Kaylee’s clinical background is mainly upper extremity and hand therapy in outpatient settings, along with functional capacity evaluations for disability and workers’ compensation cases and some skilled nursing and home health work.
What Kaylee enjoys most about students is their creativity, so labs are built to let it show. Students work through case studies and projects that ask how they would treat a given person, see actual patients in pro bono clinics, and use the different simulated settings on-campus to apply what they learn in a realistic setting.
Transcript
Kaylee Munch – MOT, OTR_L – OT Faculty Profiles, USAHS
[00:00:00] Kaylee Munch (OT Faculty): I have predominantly been in upper extremity hands, which is typically where we treat people who have some type of impairment from the shoulder down to the elbow, the wrist, and the hand that really impacts their ability to do everyday things. So I’ve typically been in the outpatient setting with that, helping them to overcome their injury to get back to independence. But I also have been involved with what’s called functional capacity evaluations, which is normally seen with disability cases and workers’ comp, and I’ve also had some experience in skilled nursing and home health. [00:00:34] I love their creativity. One of my favorite things to do is really plan unique, fun lab activities where they can show their creativity. They can take what they’re learning from their textbooks and our lectures and really apply it and use some of their creativity that they can use to see, “How would I treat this person? How would I help them?” So it’s really, really wonderful to see how unique they can bring their own personalities and perspectives into these case studies. [00:01:03] We plan several different types of lab activities where students can either be reading case studies or be assigned different types of projects to really be able to use their creativity. So some examples are being able to participate in pro bono clinics here as a way to interact with true patients and be able to take from what they’re learning in their courses and apply it to a true clinical scenario. And then also some of our clinical simulations such as being able to use the CICP, where there are all of these inpatient hospital beds so that they can use the actual environment to really bring out their creativity and understand how to apply what they’re learning. [00:01:48] I think that what the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences really offers the students is a sense of community and togetherness because I think that we are one, in terms of faculty and students, to have the same purpose. We as faculty want to be involved to help them have a positive learning experience and be the best, most knowledgeable occupational therapist that they can be, and I think students come to us to have that community feeling but also to be able to go out and be a confident, good occupational therapist to help treat these patients in the best way.
