THERE is an early morning hum on the ward. It's frosty outside but on the inside we are cradled in a cocoon of heat. Collette Forkin, dressed functionally in her uniform of dark green pants and white top, is calm and unhurried in her manner. She smiles warmly, speaks quietly and never seems to look at her watch.
Her job involves caring for elderly patients in Our Lady's Ward at St Vincent's General Hospital in Dublin. Forkin is the ward's occupational therapist. "I knew I wanted to work with people," she says about her earliest impulse to become an `OT'. For anyone thinking about this career, she says you have to be "sensitive to people's needs - and practical-minded and resourceful. You have to be a good problem-solver".
Many people don't understand what occupational therapists do, she feels. "We're not there to occupy, we're there to treat," she explains. "Our main aim is to enable people to reach their highest level of functioning again so that they can be as independent as possible in every area of life."
OTs work to build up functions such as hand functions and perceptual functions, she explains. "We'd use a special activity to address a special need. It must be a valid purposeful activity. It's goal-directed."
Her job involves assessing people in their execution of everyday functions, such as boiling the kettle to make a cup of tea or getting in and out of the bath. She must identify problems and work to enable them to be as independent as possible or to compensate. This is achieved through teaching new techniques or through using adaptive equipment.
"In every different setting you'd liaise with different people," says Forkin. "We work in day centres, community centres, general hospitals - there are different referral sources in each area. Anybody interested in occupational therapy should visit a selection of departments to get a feel for the job.
"An OT working in a psychiatric unit would have different problems, such as anxiety management, enabling people to cope with stress. That's why the course is so tough. You need this breadth of knowledge to enable you to work in all of those settings. That's why it's so interesting as well.
"I've gained great experience since I came here. I've worked in rheumatology, hand injuries, vascular, the stroke programme and now in the care-of-the-elderly unit."
An open day at Trinity College, Dublin, awakened Forkin's interest in occupational therapy. She spoke to her guidance counsellor at Loreto Secondary School in Balbriggan, Co Dublin, about it as a career. "I was 17," she recalls. "It was a difficult decision to make."
In 1990, after completing her Leaving Cert, she started studying at the School of occupational therapy in Trinity College. "It's a very interesting course," she says off the four-year degree programme. "It's tough and very stressful too. It's full-time and the hours are very full. You're commuting from the school in Dun Laoghaire to lectures in Trinity for a lot of your subjects." There are also placements, research assignments, a final-year project and periods of clinical observation.
During the second half of the course, students must do placements. "You wouldn't necessarily get a placement in Dublin," she says. "I had to go to Cork. I did to weeks at the end of third year in Cork University Hospital.
She also did a 10-week placement in psychiatric work at Tara House Day Centre in the North Strand, Dublin. Also included are two six-week elective placements. Forkin worked at St Joseph's Rheumatology Unit in Harold's Cross, Dublin, and at the Mentally Handicap Workshop in North Great Charles Street, Dublin.
"I can't imagine myself doing anything else," she says. "Everyone is so different. I find it very rewarding. It's very satisfying because you're enabling people to be independent."
