Speaker: Kristin Nuckols, OTD, MOT, OTR/L
Tell us about yourself.
Kristin Nuckols: My name is Kristin Nuckols, I'm the co-founder and Chief Clinical Officer of Imago Rehab. I have been in Occupational Therapy (OT) for 16 years and I have always worked with individuals with stroke, brain injury, and spinal cord injury. It has been my focus the entire time.
Why did you choose to focus on neurological rehab?
Kristin Nuckols: Ever since I was a student in occupational therapy,
Kristin Nuckols: I have just had a fascination, and a passion, for working with people with neurologic conditions. There is something magical about the service that we provide.
Kristin Nuckols: It's kind of like baking, where you put all of these ingredients into their care and then, at the end, something happens. That process has nuance, it has art, it has psychology, it has behavior change, it has all of these interesting components and you mix it all together and you see what happens in someone else's brain. So that process is a little bit unscripted, that process is interesting, and it's different for each client. So I find it fascinating and it is definitely the part about occupational therapy that I like the most.
How do you approach your work with patients?
Kristin Nuckols: My personal approach or philosophy to working with clients with stroke, or anyone who is trying to manage a chronic condition, is that I, as a therapist, cannot fix the problem. That might sound a little counterintuitive. They come to us for our expertise. But truly, change, especially in a chronic condition, especially in a neurologic condition, where the problem lies in someone else's brain, an external person like a therapist cannot fix that problem.
Kristin Nuckols: The only person that can make that change happen, is the client themselves. With intention, with behavior change, with routine changes, with day-by-day, hour-by-hour, focus and attention on neurologic change.
What makes Imago better or different from other rehab services?
Kristin Nuckols: One big difference about Imago Rehab is that we are using telerehabilitation as a means of providing clinical service.
Kristin Nuckols: Because of this, our clients know that we are not going to touch them, we are not going to intervene in their life. Since we are providing that service from afar, it really drives responsibility onto the client to actually change the way they function in their daily life.
How do you help patients achieve lasting improvement?
Kristin Nuckols: We help our clients achieve lasting change by beginning to view their life as therapeutic. In the traditional clinic model, clients go to the clinic to get the benefit of those clinical activities,
Kristin Nuckols: that they engage with, that's supposed to make them better. And then they go home, and nothing really happens at home. Nothing changes in their daily life. So the way that we help people achieve lasting change is by transforming the understanding of your life as now therapeutic.
Kristin Nuckols: purchased. So all of these different aspects really help people to see their whole life as therapeutic and now they have 168 hours a week that they can be therapeutic instead of only the two hours they're spending in the clinic itself.
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