When parent hopes and rehab truths clash
By Louise Kinross
Sarah Davidson is an occupational therapist at Holland Bloorview. For 14 years she’s worked with children with complex medical needs who are hospitalized here after painful surgeries or life-changing illness or trauma. Of course, that also means working with their parents. She worked with my son when he was an inpatient. We talked about what it’s like to work with families who are under enormous emotional stress.
BLOOM: How did you get into this field?
Sarah Davidson: I always knew I wanted to work in healthcare. When I finished my undergrad degree, I took four years off and explored different professions. I looked at nursing, medicine and physio and occupational therapy, and OT was what worked out for me. At the time I worked at SickKids in an administrative role. I’ve always wanted to work with kids and once I finished school I waited to start my first job as an OT at HollandBloorview so that I could find a job that fit with my interests.
BLOOM: What is a typical day like now?
Sarah Davidson: A lot of the OTs start early. We’re here at 7:30 a.m. That way if a child is learning how to get dressed in a different way, we can assess them and try to help them become more independent. We see a lot of inpatients for active therapy, so we book sessions throughout the day. It could be to work on strengthening their arms, being able to sit while they play and finding ways for them to self-feed. Our main goal is to help kids to be as independent as they can be.
Equipment is a big part of what we do—trying out equipment to toilet, or to be able to have a shower or bath. We do a lot of wheelchair prescriptions and prepare families to go home. It could be talking to a family about how to transport their child with a ventilator.
BLOOM: What’s the greatest joy of the job?
Sarah Davidson: I think, like everyone who works here, we love coming and seeing the children and the families. I love seeing kids make changes and be able to go home with their families, because it’s difficult to be in hospital. I also really love learning about the experiences of the different families I work with and where they come from.
A huge part of my love of this place is the team I work with. I’m surrounded by people who support me and who I can learn from. They’re there when you're not sure what to do, or have a difficult situation. They bring treats. They make you laugh. They know about your life outside of Bloorview, so they know a lot about you as a professional and as a person.
BLOOM: What is the greatest challenge?
Sarah Davidson: One of the greatest challenges for me is balancing a family’s hope for their child’s recovery with my own understanding of what their recovery will look like. We may know, deep down in our hearts, that a child is not going to do some of the things they did before.
I’m thinking about what the family will need to do to get home. Will they need to change how their home is set up? Or move to a different house? Or make decisions about wheelchairs and equipment that they never anticipated their child needing?
We’re at a place where we’re ready to have these conversations, but families often aren’t ready.
The wheelchair conversation is the hardest.
BLOOM: I know Barbara Gibson has done research about how our culture places so much value on walking.
Sarah Davidson: Sometimes Holland Bloorview is the parents’ first exposure to disability. Their child may have gone through something traumatic and lost a lot of their abilities. And the parents are still grieving and in crisis. Sometimes needing to make significant decisions that will impact their child’s future is just too much.
BLOOM: It sounds like it’s an emotional process that you can’t rush. On the other hand, you must feel pressure to make sure they have what they need when they go home.
Sarah Davidson: The time they’re here isn’t indefinite, and it’s a window during which we can help support them. The fact that they will need to be discharged is a pressure.
What I’ve learned, after being here for so long, is that some families won’t be ready to make those big decisions while they’re inpatients, and that’s okay. Sometimes they need to go home and live their new reality first.
BLOOM: What kind of emotions come up for you around difficult conversations with families?
Sarah Davidson: Sometimes I get nervous. I can also feel sad when I put myself in the family’s situation—they have to think about things they never thought they would think about.
BLOOM: Do families sometimes lash out at you?
Sarah Davidson: When the family’s stress level is high, it can be directed onto staff. Parents may say hurtful things. I don’t think families realize that we take their situations home with us. I try not to take things personally, but it can be very difficult at times.
BLOOM: As a parent I didn’t think about how it felt to be on the staff side of hard conversations until I heard a therapist here describe it. Is there anything you do to support yourself?
Sarah Davidson: We use our team to help deliver a consistent message. That may be during a family team meeting, or by pulling together a smaller team. So the physio and I may meet with the family together. If the physio has been working on walking, having us both there to make suggestions is helpful.
BLOOM: What do you do to manage your own stress?
Sarah Davidson: I do my best to take my lunches and take advantage of what’s offered at Holland Bloorview. I go swimming at lunch or participate in the weekly mindfulness session. I also participated in the mindful self-compassion group last fall. I go for a walk or come and read in the library. It’s easy to get stuck at your desk working through lunch but when I do, I’m exhausted at the end of the day. Then I’m not really there for my own family.
BLOOM: What qualities are important in your role?
Sarah Davidson: Being able to listen to what families want and need. Even if you’ve done something a few times with clients with the same diagnosis, every family needs something different. Being patient, and realizing you will have to say the information over and over again, in different ways, for families to hear and understand it. Being able to have empathy and compassion for what they’re going through.
BLOOM: What about creativity?
Sarah Davidson: That goes with knowing every family is different. Sometimes you’ll plan for a session but it doesn’t go as you thought it would, and you need to think on the spot to try something different. For the older kids, you can negotiate things, because they understand that you’re trying to help them. But for the younger kids, you have to make what they need to do appear fun.
BLOOM: If you could change one thing in children’s rehab, what would it be?
Sarah Davidson: I think better access to services and resources when families leave here. Our families are fearful and worried about finding community nursing to support kids who have tracheotomies and ventilators. Respite services are limited and families are burning out. Even in a big city like Toronto, the home nursing isn’t there to support families.
Funding is another big area of need. A lot of the equipment is very expensive. We also need better access to therapy services in the community. There’s some, but not always the frequency that is needed.
BLOOM: If you had to give advice to yourself on your first day, from where you stand now, what would you say?
Sarah Davidson: It’s okay not to know everything. You’ll never know everything, and you’ll continue to learn from your colleagues and from every family you work with. When we’re honest with families that we don’t know everything—that we’re not sure about what the best solution is—it makes it easier to partner with them and get their input.
BLOOM: Because we can’t necessarily ‘solve’ things in a traditional sense for many of the kids and families we work with.
Sarah Davidson: Sometimes you can’t change what is. Sometimes you can’t make it better.
BLOOM: If you could change something about our workplace, what would it be?
Sarah Davidson: Recognizing that staff are under an incredible amount of stress. They’re dealing with an ever-increasing complexity of clients and families, and it’s important to offer supports.
For example, I felt valued that we were allowed to take the eight-week mindful self-compassion course. It was a significant amount of time out of our work week that enabled me to connect with clinicians, not just in my program, but across the organization. I got to hear their stories and learn how to better take care of myself.
