Anderston St. Germain – OTD, MS, OTR/L – OT Faculty Profiles, USAHS
Anderston St. Germain, OTD, MS, OTR/L, teaches occupational therapy at the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences (USAHS) campus in Miami, Florida. Anderston’s career began on an inpatient psychiatric unit and includes years in memory care, home health and inpatient rehabilitation, with a particular commitment to clients living with mental illness.
Because mental health conditions are lifelong, the work is about encouraging clients to invest in their own health and healing. Anderston brings that into a lab in the Center for Innovative Clinical Practice (CICP), where actors portray an adult and a child with mental health conditions. For students interested in mental health practice, it’s a clear example of simulation preparing them for how different actual clients can be from textbook cases.
Transcript
Anderston St. Germain – OTD, MS, OTR_L – OT Faculty Profiles, USAHS
[00:00:00] Anderston St. Germain (OT Faculty): I’ve worked in several areas of occupational therapy. When I was a new grad, I worked in inpatient psych unit. For multiple years I did, work with clients with memory care, depression, other mental health disorders. I’ve also worked home health for multiple years. I did work several years inpatient rehab setting. [00:00:22] I think what I like most about teaching is when I see students, they come in and they don’t really know a thing about what we do, and by the time that they’re done with my course or the program, you see them transition from, you know, students to entry-level clinicians. [00:00:39] I think I like working the most with clients with mental illness because a lot of these conditions that they have, well, all of them, they’re not curable. It’s lifelong, and so we’re always with them encouraging them to, you know, invest in their own health, invest in their own healing, and that’s pretty much what mental health is. You know, it’s, it’s their lived experiences, their journey through this process, no matter what the condition is. [00:01:01] We have a couple of actors come in. One’s an adult, one’s a child, and they both have mental health conditions, and the students have to learn how to show empathy and administer an assessment while working through the symptoms that the actors present. The students initially in class learn how to do assessments, but with each other it’s very easy ’cause, you know, the, the peers know the questions and know the assessments. But the, the actors in the CICP don’t know that, and they’re also presenting those symptoms. So it’s always interesting to see how the students react and ’cause they don’t always realize how difficult it can be when you’re working with someone with a real condition. So I love doing that to, to really show them what it’s gonna be like when they’re out there and how much they have to really change and grow and be ready for.
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