Hoang ("Wong") Tran  - a Certified Hand Therapist (CHT) and the owner of Hands-on Therapy Services and the online community of practice CHT Secrets - has been practicing as an OT for about 20 years. She started Hands-on Therapy Services about 6 years ago in an effort to help more people with hand and arm injuries be more active and pain free while avoiding pills, injections, and surgery. As a CHT, she also helps a lot of people after surgery get the best possible outcome.
 
Hoang has always been in education in one form or another; when she started her private practice, she saw a need to create a community for OT's that want to specialize in hand therapy. Through the community she has established since through CHT Secrets, she seeks to provide coaching and mentorship for others who want to navigate the specialty practice area of hand therapy. 

Cheryl Crow is an occupational therapist who has lived with rheumatoid arthritis for 16 years. In 2019 she created a video and social media channel called Arthritis Life to educate, empower and inspire patients with arthritis and their providers. On Arthritis Life, she shares life hacks from the OT perspective, patient stories, provider interviews, and product reviews in a fun, talk show-style format.
 
Cheryl has volunteered for the Arthritis Foundation in numerous educational and advocacy events, including speaking at the Juvenile Arthritis Conference, KAT-FISH camp for kids and families with arthritis, and many adult-focused arthritis events. While attending many arthritis focused events, in addition to participating in social media groups focused on rheumatoid arthritis, she observed a huge unmet need for patients to have help in navigating simple daily activities.
 
She performed independent qualitative research on the discussion content of disease-specific Facebook groups, which showed that patients were spending the most time talking about IADLs (instrumental activities of daily living) and mental health/coping skills in these groups. She presented this research at the WFOT conference as well as the national rheumatology conference in 2015.
 
Arthritis Life was born out of her interest in finding fun, creative ways to address the unmet needs of patients with arthritis and related rheumatic conditions.
 
Cheryl graduated with her Masters in Occupational Therapy from Samuel Merritt University in Oakland, CA in 2012. For the following 8 years she focused her professional work on pediatric developmental disabilities in outpatient and school settings in the greater Seattle, WA area as well as Shanghai, China. She started teaching as an adjunct faculty member at the Lake Washington Institute of Technology's OTA program in 2016 and she greatly enjoys educating the future workforce of OT practitioners. 

Connect with Cheryl:

• Via email
• On her Facebook Page, Arthritis Life Cheryl
• On Twitter @realcc
• Via her website, The Enthusiastic Life 

Polly Benson, OTR/L, is a licensed occupational therapist with 28 years of experience treating patients in multiple settings. She currently works for Comprehensive Therapy Consultants in Atlanta, GA as a school based OT. She is a graduate of The Ohio State University. Polly has extensive experience in technology apps and strategies designed to assist clients for achieving therapy goals. She is a distinguished therapist and seasoned continuing education instructor. She volunteers at her local high school as the theater troupe Booster Club President, and at her church as a high school small group leader. 

Recently Polly invented a new product called the Legi-Liner to help students with improving their handwriting. On this episode, she talks about how she got the idea for that innovation and gives tips to others who may also be interested in product creation and development. 

Polly's product can be purchased via her website, www.Legiliner.com. 

Connect with Polly:

• Via email legilinertool@gmail.com
• Facebook page @Legi-Liner

David Puder, MD, is a physician who practices medicine as a psychiatrist. David hosts a podcast called the Psychiatry & Psychotherapy Podcast and has an interest in helping students overcome test anxiety. He has also spoken on the topic of test anxiety on Session 337 of The PreMed Years podcast.

On this episode, David talks about how test anxiety can serve as a barrier for people who are trying to get into occupational therapy (OT) school as well as for those in OT school and OT students who are preparing to take the certification exam and strategies that have been found effective in addressing text anxiety.