OTD Capstone
My OTD capstone experience was at TREE House of Greater St Louis in Wentzville, Missouri. TREE House was founded in 1975, and is one of the oldest therapeutic horsemanship barns in the country. TREE House sits on 80+ acres of land, with 18 horses in the herd.
I completed my capstone from May 16, 2022- August 18, 2022.
Summary of Literature Review and Needs Assessment
Hippotherapy is an effective treatment tool that involves a horse’s movement and gait pattern to increase strength, stability, balance, coordination, and flexibility in clients. Hippotherapy can be used with various populations and age ranges with more evidence needed to support interventions with those with mental health conditions. Equine assisted services refer to services involving a horse but not necessarily given by an occupational therapist. These services include groundwork and fostering connections with the horses. Program development is a process that involves steps such as planning, developing, implementing, and evaluating. Four large steps for program development include a needs assessment, program planning, program implementation, and program evaluation. With the combination of my intrinsic factors (personality style, resilience, learning style), extrinsic factors and awareness of my additional learning needs I look forward to learning more about hippotherapy and program development from an established site here in St Louis.
Purpose Statement
The purpose for my capstone experience is to learn more about the therapeutic relationship between clients and animals, like horses, learn about best practices in hippotherapy, learn about management and leadership at a non profit, participate in marketing efforts, and help with program development. I hope to be able to specifically see the benefits of hippotherapy in conjunction with traditional therapy with a variety of clients. I hope to gain experience in leadership, management, and program development in preparation to open my own practice during my career. Each of these topics excites me and are things I would still like to learn more about to round out my time in occupational therapy graduate school. At the end of my capstone, I hope to share my knowledge and learning with other students and faculty, and those at my site.
I envision learning about utilizing hippotherapy and therapeutic riding in practice, how to create and maintain a practice like this, and how to development programs or rejuvenate existing ones.
Project Description
My capstone project will focus on sharing what I have learned regarding certification to use hippotherapy as a treatment tool in our practice. I hope to share all the things one needs to know to be ready for the process and make an informed decision about pursing this certification. I want to share this knowledge with the student body at Wash U to facilitate interest in this topic, and hopefully inspire someone to also investigate this. From my needs assessment, I know that there needs to be further research into this treatment tool, so hopefully I or someone I present too will want to research this topic more!
I also hope to present all I have worked on regarding the living classroom project at my site. For this living classroom project, I have had to research different animals, how they would work as therapy animals, different programming ideas like a sensory trail and meditation garden and write curriculum ideas for programs to take place at the living classroom. I then had to do a cost breakdown to present to relevant staff members so fundraising and grant efforts could begin to take place. I then helped with writing several grants, which we hope to hear about before my time at TREE House is finished. I aided in soliciting for fundraising for the sensory trail, and organized a volunteer work day to install some of the new elements to the sensory trail. I presented my ideas for the living classroom, the sensory trail training materials, and what I learned from this site at my final project meeting with my mentor, Amy Willard, and the Chief Program Resource Officer, Lauren Frosch. I presented sustainability, feasibility, curriculum, and further expansion ideas.
In my needs assessment, contextual factors that I found for myself included that I wanted a hands-on experience at a site that allowed me to be comfortable and show my extroverted personality. I identified that I have knowledge gaps around horses, hippotherapy, and some personal barriers like my need to be detail orientated and not having as many guidelines structuring this experience. From those findings I formed my learning objectives. 5 objectives have guided my experience thus far and will continue to guide the last half of the capstone: including learning hippotherapy principles, learning safety around hippotherapy, partaking in marketing efforts, learning about financial aspects at a non-profit, and participating in program development as best helpful at TREE House. My area of focus was advanced practice leadership/management, and program development. Each area of focus is hit on in my learning objectives, and I maintain at the forefront of each day at TREE House.
Areas of Focus: Advanced Clinical Practice, Leadership/Management, Program Development
Faculty Mentor: Jessie Bricker, OTD, OTR/L
Site Mentor: Amy Willard, Program Director, Certified Riding Instructor, LPC