Stacey Wiles

Year of Graduation:  2005

Job title:  Occupational Therapist

I assist patients in their rehabilitation process in both the hospital and long term care settings. I assess how their injury/diagnosis affects their everyday activities from basic tasks such as dressing, grooming and bathing, to higher level tasks such as cooking, paying bills, yardwork, childcare, as well as a wide variety of hobbies. So during their process of recovery I help patients improve, modify or adapt their skills and abilities so they can continue to do the everyday tasks they need and want to do. 

What do you like best about your work? 

In the profession of occupational therapy, you need to have an understanding of virtually every diagnosis and how that may affect a person's ability to participate in any given task. Therefore it makes the job challenging but at the same time never dull because you're always learning something new. I ultimately like helping and seeing people get back to doing the things they want and need to do despite whatever incident they might have experienced.

How has Sociology help you do what you do... how are you using what you learned in college? 

The patient population I work with varies in age, gender, religious beliefs, ethnic background and socioeconomic status. I have to consider each one of those aspects into my plan of care for each patient I work with on a daily basis.  For example, in the hospital setting I often work with interpreters and some of my patients have been incarcerated, therefore I need to use that information in order to effectively analyze my patient's progress, guide my approach to their care and to make appropriate recommendations for their care outside of the hospital. 

Something interesting about yourself-something about your family, or a hobby, or a trip, or volunteer work, or a favorite book you've read recently-anything that says something about who you are as a real person:  

I love to travel and thanks to CSB/SJU I was able to have the opportunity to travel multiple times, both out of the state and to five different countries. Going into graduate school for occupational therapy, I felt that in order to best maximize my educational experience and to enhance my skills I decided to follow suit. I was able to travel to Washington, Oregon, Ecuador and Tanzania. Now that I've closed my textbooks for awhile, I still like to take time away from work to travel. Most recently I traveled with a couple of friends to Hungary, Czech Republic and Austria.  We spent one week of our trip biking from Prague to Vienna which was a wonderful way to take in the countryside and culture.  All experience I will not soon forget!

 Contact Information:   [email protected]