Can You Become A CHT If You Work In Pediatrics_
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[00:00:00] Becoming a certified hand therapist or specializing in hands, even if you don't want to become a certified hand therapist, yet you, that doesn't mean you have to give up everything you love doing as an occupational therapist or physical therapist. It just means that now you have this additional expert knowledge on certain things as it pertains to hand and arm injuries.
Let me explain a little bit further. If you're in pediatrics as an occupational therapist or a physical therapist and you have an interest in hand, this is specifically going to be for you. My name is Wong. I'm an occupational therapist and certified hand therapist, and over 10 years ago I started my therapy clinic and.
I always knew that there was this gap in, um, the training that were given inside the university. There is no, there's not enough time to teach you everything there is to know. And so a lot of the work of specializing in hands has to be post degree. Right. So when I [00:01:00] started my therapy clinic over 10 years ago, I knew there was this huge gap in training other therapists, which is the whole reason why hand therapy secrets came to be over five years ago.
My goal here is to just give you, um, opportunities to develop your, your clinical skills, and also to give you more choices in your career. If hand therapy is the route you wanna take. So this came, this question came out from somebody who's really interested in hands, but he works currently in peds and he actually sounds to me like he likes to be in peds and he just wants the hand specialty to kind of like enhance it.
So the primary motivation to increase my skills as a pediatric OT and understanding the upper extremity. I'm not sure if pediatric hands differs from a practical perspective, AKA abnormalities activity selection, treating things like hemiparesis, hemiplegia, cerebral palsy, spasticity, and things like that.[00:02:00]
Would I need to supplement my CHG certification with other CEUs in order to translate the knowledge into practical skills for peds? The great thing is you don't have to give a pediatrics if you work within pediatrics, right? If you work within pediatrics, think about pediatrics. It's huge within itself.
You can be early intervention. Right. Early interventions, what? Zero to three, uh, before that you can be in nicu. Um, so before I became a certified hand therapist, I was working in acute care and I worked in the nicu. And so in the NICU you really needed to, um, be able to like be able to work with these little itty bitty things.
They could have brachial plexus injuries, they could have abnormalities. One of my worst splints I ever made that took me the longest time ever. It was on a kid who was born with an abnormality of his thumb. He was actually missing his bones, and so I needed to make him a splint. Let me tell [00:03:00] you, I, I was straight sweating.
You have to gown up for this, and the split material was like this big, and it's like the thinnest piece of paper you'll ever see. Took me an hour and a half to make that super splint. Now I know I would probably just drop 'em versus splinting them, but anyway. Uh, that's neither here nor there, but it just supplements.
Being a certified hand therapist just supplements your, your ability to work in pediatrics, right? So early, you know, nicu, early intervention, and you have the whole gamut. Now, PEDS is considered always 21. So let's say you work in pediatrics, you're in the school system. What kind of kids are you gonna be treating there?
There it is more than just hands. You have to work with their hands and arms, right? But you have to do sensory integration stuff. You have to know about working with kids on the spectrum, things like that. So it's all this, these pockets of information and knowledge that you have. And then when you [00:04:00] learn about hand therapy, you get to apply that very specific information, knowledge to your patient population.
Let me know if that resonates with you. Let me know if that makes sense. You can leave me a comment. So don't think of becoming a certified hand therapist as like it's gonna strip away from everything that you're doing. You can totally go into, you know, you can totally stay in peds if that's your thing.
You can, even within your pediatric setting, you're gonna have those kids that are coming in with broken bones, with, you know, um, you know, babies have trigger thumbs and trigger fingers and things like that, that you'll be able to treat more confidently. You're gonna have these kids with, um, cerebral palsy, they're gonna have spasticity, they're gonna have had strokes, and they're gonna have different abnormalities, and you're gonna know how to treat them because you've been studying.
To become a certified hand therapist. Now when you are studying to become a certified hand therapist, the whole point of becoming a [00:05:00] certified hand therapist is not to only treat within a setting. We are known to treat within a certain setting. We are known to be treating an outpatient, but that doesn't mean certified hand therapist can't work.
In hospital settings, they do. There's plenty of them that work there. They work within various age ranges. So imagine you can be a CHT that works with a whole gamut of age ranges. Now, before I became A-C-H-T-I, I did nicu, so I just had an interest in hands. And so I was always trying to like, I was always trying to get into that outpatient job, so I was studying and that's how I kind of knew.
And then when you get the case. You know what to do, you just look shit up. Right. Or if you have a mentor, great. Ask them questions. Um, I didn't have a mentor. I just had to look things up. I had to like sit there and like frigging read, um, so I could figure out what I was supposed to do with that, you know?
Um, but, you know, then you take them into early intervention. So from the nicu we had [00:06:00] to do, um, evaluations, like to see where they are along their developmental timeline. So then you are looking for certain things too. They're not always, um, completely hand therapy related, meaning like there's no abnormalities and things like that.
You're just knowing, um, how they're supposed to develop. So, you know, I think that when it comes to becoming a certified hand therapist, you can be in pediatrics and carve your space within the hand therapy world within pediatrics. Let me know if that makes sense. Um. I think that the decision has to come from, do you want to become a certified hand therapist and be able to broaden your horizon, right?
So when you're in pediatrics, you don't, um, you only study pediatrics. You only study a certain. Um, genre of, I say genre 'cause I'm, I can't think of the word, but [00:07:00] like the genre of diagnosis, right? The genre of symptoms for that particular age range. When you become a certified hand therapist, you have to know that age range and everyone else's age range.
That's the biggest difference, right? As a certified hand therapist, I have to study kids. I have to study all their abnormalities. I have to study about strokes, and I have to study about hemiplegia and spasticity because all of that shit affects the hands. You have to know how to treat it. You have to know why.
Um, it's happening. It's coming from here, but you have to know the, uh, the conditions that arise because someone has it. The deformities that come from it, you have to know. Potentially different surgeries that someone could have to be able to fix or correct those types of issues. Right. We work with someone who have had multiple surgeries due to spasticity, so becoming a certified hand therapist isn't just about treating flexor tendons, isn't just treating like adults.[00:08:00]
It's treating everybody with hand and arm problems. And I think if you're interested. And becoming a certified hand therapist by expanding your knowledge base, it's just going to give you more clinical skills. It's going to give you more opportunities to expand what you can do within your career. I've had OTs who worked more in pediatrics and worked in a pediatric hospital, and then she became a certified hand therapist, uh, because she got her ears and her hours and all that good stuff.
And then she studied and she had, she passed a test and then because she became a certified hand therapist, when she was ready to sort of leave that uh, pediatric hospital, she could get any freaking job she worked in, uh, adults. After that. She worked in geriatrics after that, just 'cause she moved to a certain part of town that.
There was a lot more older people. Right. So it just gives you more, I think, more expansion [00:09:00] in your career. We talk about being an OT so that we have a lot of opportunities. We have to create our opportunities. You don't just have an OT license and all of a sudden, poof. You can do whatever you know you want.
You have to practice, you have to study those things, you know, and that's what's gonna be able to expand you. Pediatrics and hands is such a small, small, small niche like peds within, um, hands is so, so small. Um, I, I personally don't know of any like very specific pediatric hand therapy course, but I'm sure you can Google it.
I'm sure somebody's gonna make a course or have an in-person thing. Um, but I think that a lot of times you can take certain courses that will help you. Regardless of the patient population. Like when I took, um, a kinesiology class back when they offered it, you know, 15, you know, more than 15 years ago, I started it when I, um, when I was working at the hospital outpatient.
And the person who [00:10:00] brought that to me was actually, um, my supervisor who was the rehab supervisor, and he was really interested in kinesiology taping and stuff like that. He took all the courses to become an instructor. And he brought that to me and he taught me. And then because I really liked it, I, I took those series of courses back then, and that course still helps me to this day.
I, it doesn't matter. I taped myself for injuries. I have taped my father, my mother, my brothers. Like it helps you in your whole life, not just with. Like the kids, it can help you with your kids, your patients, right? So think about the classes you wanna take, that's gonna help develop your clinical skills so you have more knowledge about that.
My manual therapy, um, course is very specific to treating hand and armies. I am very heavy into the foundation of anatomy because if you understand anatomy and you understand how to apply the anatomy, [00:11:00] you'll be able to safely treat. Any kind of case that comes your way. Surgical cases, uh, non-surgical cases, you'll be able to handle kids, adults, geriatrics.
You'll be able to know how to deal with orthopedic issues and neurological types of issues. Um, so pick a class that you think can really develop your clinical skills. I can't speak on every other class, but I know that my class, that my two day manual therapy workshop. Is a killer and it's gonna help you develop your, your clinical skills and get you started in hand therapy.
It's gonna get you started really understanding and knowing it and knowing how to treat it. You can apply to all different ages 'cause people have come and take my classes. They have, um, worked in, uh, neuro, neuro, they have worked in ortho, they have worked in peds and so much about, it's like, how do I handle, how do I provide effective treatment?
And that's what you learn in the manual therapy [00:12:00] class. Now, if you are interested in becoming a certified hand therapist, then that specific, uh, exam, prep on demand, that's gonna help you to navigate that. You won't just learn about peds, you will learn about everything that is required in order to sit and pass a CHC exam.
So your job, right, your mission. Okay, sorry, I think I'm dating myself with Mission Impossible stuff, but. Your, your mission is to decide what you want to do. You can, you can be in peds and you can be in hands. It is not mutually, mutually exclusive to be in hands or to be in peds. You can actually do both.
You can carve a niche for yourself. In your part of the world, in your town and your decision is how much do you want it? Because it takes effort to become a certified hand therapist and you just have to decide if it's something you want. [00:13:00] If it's something you really want, then are you willing to put effort into it?
Right. Uh, let me know if this video helps. I thought that was a great question coming from Josh and I thought that, um. You know, I wanted to be able to answer for anyone who was in the peds world who had an interest in hands. I've had students in the peds world working in ortho peds, you know, become certified hand therapists.
They just have to bridge their knowledge, um, you know, for everything. Adult, they were able to increase the opportunities that came their way afterwards, have more choices. They want to stampedes, move out of pedes, move into a new area. Say in an old area, you just have more choices and opportunities. So let me know if that helps you.
If that helped you leave me, you know, like the video, hit subscribe. Leave me a comment, ask me a question if you want, if you need some clarification on that, I would love to be able to help you so, and if you wanna work with me [00:14:00] in any way, my links will be below. Thanks so much.
