Barry University alumna Megan Sortino, 15’, was recently hired as an Occupational Therapist at the UAB Spain Rehab Centetr’s inpatient rehab hospital in Birmingham, AL.
As an Occupational Therapist at UAB Spain Rehab Center, Sortino is currently working on starting up an equal access OT clinic in conjunction with Equal Access Birmingham (EAB). EAB is a student-run, free clinic that provides continuity of care to the medically underserved. Sortino will be working with UAB’s Occupational Therapy program to establish a student board who will provide free services under her direction.
Sortino attributes many of her successes to her experience at Barry. During her undergraduate and graduate studies, she worked as a rehab aid at UF Health Shands Rehab Hospital in Gainesville, FL.
“With on-campus classes being held every other weekend, I had the ability to work in the field and gain valuable hands-on experience that allowed me to utilize what I was learning in the classroom,” said Sortino, who served as President of the Student Occupational Therapy Association (SOTA) while at Barry University.
As a student, Sortino represented Barry at the Assembly of Student Delegates at the American Occupational Therapy Association’s (AOTA) national conference in Baltimore. While there, she applied to AOTA’s Emerging Leaders Development Program (ELDP) and was selected for the 2014-2015 fully-funded 2-day leadership training at their headquarters. During her time there she was assigned a project under the mentorship of AOTA President Elect, Dr. Amy Lamb.
“ELDP equipped me with the tools to practice everyday leadership in my role as an OT and a new practitioner,” she said of AOTA’s training program.
This training allowed her to present recently, in front of her new colleagues, at Alabama’s Occupational Therapy Association’s annual conference on the topic of everyday leadership for the new practitioner.