Occupational Therapist - Pediatric Acute Care

Vanderbilt University Medical Center•Nashville, TN

9h•Onsite

About The Position

Vanderbilt Health is seeking an Occupational Therapist to join their Acute Care Rehabilitation Team at Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt. This role involves providing inpatient occupational therapy services to infants, children, and adolescents across various acute care settings, including intensive care, cardiac, medical, surgical, neurologic, and medically complex populations. The position is full-time, 40 hours per week, Monday through Friday, with one weekend per month. As part of a nationally recognized children's hospital and academic medical center, the therapist will help patients achieve optimal functional outcomes, support developmental progression, caregiver engagement, and safe transitions of care. The Acute Care Rehabilitation Team provides occupational, physical, and speech therapy services throughout the hospital, partnering with physicians, nurses, rehabilitation therapists, child life specialists, social workers, respiratory therapists, and case managers to support patients with critical illness, cardiac and post-surgical conditions, neurological diagnoses, orthopedic injuries, complex medical disorders, and chronic and developmental conditions. The team focuses on maximizing function, promoting independence, supporting developmental milestones, educating caregivers, and facilitating safe discharge planning.

Requirements

Graduate of an accredited Occupational Therapy program
Current Tennessee Occupational Therapist license or eligibility to obtain licensure
Basic Life Support (BLS) certification
Experience working with medically complex patients in an acute care or hospital-based setting
Bachelor's degree
1 year of relevant work experience

Nice To Haves

Pediatric acute care experience
Pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) experience
Experience treating medically complex pediatric populations
Experience in cardiac, critical care, or inpatient rehabilitation settings

Responsibilities

Evaluate and treat pediatric patients with developmental, neurological, orthopedic, cardiac, post-surgical, and medically complex diagnoses
Develop individualized, evidence-based treatment plans that promote functional independence, participation, and developmental progress
Provide occupational therapy interventions in an acute care hospital environment
Assess self-care, fine motor, cognitive, sensory, and functional performance skills
Educate patients, families, and caregivers to support successful outcomes beyond hospitalization
Collaborate with interdisciplinary healthcare teams to optimize patient care
Participate in discharge planning and continuity of care efforts
Maintain timely, accurate documentation consistent with hospital and regulatory standards
Analyzes comprehensive information from formal and informal assessment that is pertinent to the patient's care and management to determine a rehabilitation treatment diagnosis.
Collaborates with stakeholders in establishing the plan of care, coordinates and implements care delivery while anticipating patient care needs across the rehabilitation continuum.
Applies appropriate, evidence-based interventions to ensure effective outcomes and re-evaluates performance to assess patient's progress towards goals.
Employs strategies to promote successful return to home, community, and school/vocational environments.
Demonstrates proficiency in documentation practices. Documents in the appropriate templates and utilizes only approved abbreviations within patient documentation. Meets institutional standards for quality and timeliness of documentation. May complete accurate chart audits of co-workers in the same classification category
Demonstrates mastery in developing a plan of care that incorporates treatment interventions focused on meeting objective goals. Develops and documents patient focused short and long term goals that are functional and measurable. Identifies the need for and referral to other services, as needed. May serve as a mentor for other clinical staff to develop their skills in treatment planning. May consult with team members or implement new procedures.
Demonstrates mastery in evaluating patients with physical deficits including impairments, developmental disabilities, functional limitations, disabilities, or changes in physical function by obtaining information pertinent to the assessment and administering and scoring standardized tests and objective measures of deficit areas. Selects appropriate measures and performs a functional assessment to document patient's status requiring skilled therapy. Interprets the results of the assessment and their significance to the patient, family, referring physician and other members of the health care team. Demonstrates experience in clinical evaluation skills and may serve as a mentor for other clinical staff to develop their skills in evaluation techniques. Contributes to the development of best practices for the organization. May consult with team members to implement new procedures.
Demonstrates mastery in providing treatment consistent with physician prescription and established plan of care. Able to modify treatment plan as needed to demonstrate provision of skilled therapy services including progression of treatment throughout course of care, and revision of treatment interventions of goals not met. Supervises and directs certified athletic trainers (PT only), physical therapist / occupational therapist assistants, technicians and volunteers and students. Selects and follows correct protocol for care, as established, and actively seek out, utilize and mentor/teach others on current evidence based treatment strategies. May consult with team members to offer suggestions for treatment strategies. May serve as a clinical content expert for practice area, initiates consultation with team members for advanced treatment of patients, develop forum for staff members to utilize clinical expertise.
Demonstrates mastery in communicating functional impact of assessment findings, treatment interventions, treatment planning diagnosis, and disease process. Able to adapt communication to needs/level of understanding of audience and share appropriate information/literature. May supervise, educate and train students from professional programs of physical therapy, occupational therapy, and athletic training and/or students and staff from other departments. Contributes in the development of patient education best practices for the organization.