Hello everyone,

I am an OTD student who started working part time as a home health aid in August 2021. I have really enjoyed building my interpersonal skills and helping people inside their own home environments. I feel like I learn so much about my clients, and can see ways OT could help them.

However I’m not sure if my enjoyable experience as an aid would translate to the OT role in home health. I’ve heard a lot of negative things about the paperwork, low number of visits (which has also been an issue for aid services tbh), and unpaid drive time.

I think there is a lot of opportunity in home health in my area, so I was hoping to hear some pros and cons from OTs already working in this setting. Do you have time to develop therapeutic relationships with your patients, or do you mainly do evals? Is there a lot of variability between different companies and their policies? I’m from Ohio, so I would especially appreciate hearing experiences from Ohio OTs but anything anyone could share about this setting in practice would also be great:)