‘Kick-Start the Healing Journey’: OT Alum Helps Patients Adjust to their New Normal

Inpatient rehabilitation is the only specialty McCaffrey has known. Shortly after graduating from Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS), she learned about Frisbie’s new inpatient unit and became a part of the team.

She mostly treats adults, spending over an hour working with one patient at a time. During treatments, she connects with patients and their families to get a realistic picture of the obstacles and challenges they’ll face while healing.

Her goal is to prepare patients to leave the unit physically and stronger than they arrived.

“I have extended time to really get to know my patients and what interventions will work for their life,” she said. “It’s rare in healthcare to be someone patients can truly rely on, so I like being that person for them.”

McCaffrey admits her path to OT was random. She spent two years before MCPHS working, exploring the professional world.

“I knew I didn’t want to work in an office and be sitting all day,” she said. “My sister is a speech therapist, so it was actually my mom who suggested I consider OT. It seemed like a good fit because I could be active and creative.”

A New England native, McCaffrey found MCPHS and enrolled, pursuing her master’s while living with family. She had a good idea of what she wanted—to work with adults in a hospital setting—and her coursework affirmed that choice.

“The adult rehabilitation and neurology classes solidified that I was on the right track,” she said. “The OT field is multifaceted, and there are different avenues to take. I chose to lean into the more scientific side.”

That research, her evidence-based training, and her understanding of mental wellness were critical when McCaffrey began treating a 35-year-old mother of four who was suddenly and inexplicably wheelchair-bound. She couldn’t walk without falling, and all her tests were coming back normal. McCaffrey and her team on the rehab unit faced a medical mystery.

“Her brain and body were disconnected, so I had to tap into my knowledge of mental health to figure out that she couldn’t walk because her brain was in a state of stress.” The team, with McCaffrey at the helm, ultimately treated the patient for functional neurological disorder. “It comes from a deep place of trauma, so we had to work around it to trick the brain to prove it’s not in danger.”

McCaffrey was there when the patient took her first unassisted steps again. “She walked 50 feet. That was a really memorable moment, personally and professionally, to be someone’s safe space, to go through something really hard and overcome it.”

McCaffrey is bringing experiences like this back to MCPHS, working as an adjunct faculty member in the adult rehab lab, the same one that solidified her own professional path. She says she hopes to give students an accurate picture of what it’s like to be an OT.

“In healthcare, you have to balance working for a business and staying grounded in the reason you became an OT,” she said. “I try to instill in the students that we’re not going to fix the world, but we are going to leave our patients a little bit better than when we found them.”