107 – Life and OT in the Arctic ft Rachel Schooley - a podcast by Brock Cook

On Occupied we get to speak to a lot OT's from all over this amazing world but when I heard that there were OT's in the Arctic I was blown away! This is why I had to bring in Rachel Schooley on to explore this very unique part of the world to practice in. Exploring how Rachel navigates living on traditional peoples land and working with their populations. This convo was absolutely eye opening and I thoroughly enjoyed it.







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Transctiption







Brock Cook 0:00Have you ever been to the Arctic? Have you ever worked in the Arctic? Have you ever even considered what an OT might do in the Arctic? Well, this episode is gonna hopefully shed some light on that, as I had the amazing Rachel skoolie come in and talk about her job doing exactly that. The Arctic OT, we discuss a lot of the challenges benefits of this very unique environment. Get a My name is Brock Cook, and welcome to occupied. In this podcast, we're aiming to put the occupation in occupational therapy, we explore the people, topics, theories and underpinnings that make this profession so incredible. If you're new here, you can find all of our previous episodes and resources that occupied podcast.com. But for now, let's roll the episode. Yeah, so







Rachel Schooley 1:04I was working in group homes for many years, kind of, you know, between my teens into my 20s, and have done a degree in sociology and women's studies, that was my undergraduate degree. And my partner had just finished a degree in biology and was applying to become an OT, and I had no idea what ot was at that time. After a bit of investigation, yeah, it just seemed like all the parts of the job I already had, that I loved the most really like finding things that were meaningful for folks that are improved quality of life and bring joy to activity. And so I thought I would apply as well. And we actually ended up doing the OT program at the same time with a with a baby and it was great. You know, I learned a lot and definitely opened my eyes to a lot of different parts of ot some some that really fit well with what I wanted to do with my life and others not so much. But I think that's the beauty of the profession, too, is that you can kind of make it fit with with what you're looking for, in some circumstances, others maybe not so much.







Brock Cook 2:24Yeah, definitely. And that's something I try and tell people a lot is that it isn't, I don't view it as sort of this unique, while it is unique, but this sort of very individualized profession. It's kind of something that you combine with skills that you already have, or experiences you've already had, and then you turn it into whatever you want.







Rachel Schooley 2:46Absolutely. Yeah. And it's interesting, because, you know, my first year of our ot program, and it's a master's level program in Canada, I guess, probably all over the place it is. But I thought like what have I done? Just doing, you know, anatomy courses, and like I said, Bachelor of sociology and women's studies, like never touched anatomy with a 10 foot pole. That's no, not nominated. Yeah, exactly. And it's pretty intense. Like we had three months to learn the entirety of it.

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