About This Role
This role involves developing, organizing, and administering Recreation Therapy programs to provide therapeutic treatment to patients across various medical and psychiatric settings. The Recreational Therapist will work with patients in both inpatient and outpatient settings, including general medical and surgical, chemical dependency, acute psychiatry, day treatment, and spinal cord injury units.
Responsibilities
- Evaluate patients, establish goals based on evaluation findings, and develop treatment interventions
- Implement and modify treatment plans and goals as necessary throughout the course of treatment to ensure optimum outcomes
- Use Recreation Therapy expertise for direct service delivery to patients
- Act as a subject matter expert to staff, students, and other healthcare professionals
- Serve as Recreation Therapy representative on interdisciplinary teams as assigned or needed
- Educate patients, their families, and caregivers regarding treatment interventions and goals, in addition to any considerations involving adaptation to better ensure optimal treatment outcomes
- Complete administrative duties as assigned (work orders, information processing, program development) for the PM&R Service or Medical Center
- Professionally represent the Service and/or administration on behalf of the Medical Center during off-station events, committee meetings, and contacts with outside agencies
- Attend staff meetings as directed
- Maintain timely and appropriate documentation of all consults, initial evaluations, progress notes, discharge notes, patient/family education, workload statistics, QA monitors, patient attendance records, and other clinical activities
- Follow appropriate billing and coding practices
- Input scheduling data into computer systems or through approved charting methods and update daily to reflect status of patients, in concert and accordance with Medical Center policies on scheduling, consult management, and electronic wait list entry
- Complete all employee/patient incident documentation in a timely manner as required by hospital or Service policy
- Perform other duties as assigned
Requirements
- United States Citizenship: Non-citizens may only be appointed when it is not possible to recruit qualified citizens in accordance with VA Policy
- English Language Proficiency: Must be proficient in spoken and written English as required by 38 U.S.C. 7403(F)
- Education: The individual must meet at least one of the requirements below:
- A bachelor's degree or higher from an accredited college or university, with a major in therapeutic recreation or recreation/leisure, with an option and/or emphasis in therapeutic recreation. The degree must be approved by the National Council for Therapeutic Recreation Certification (NCTRC).
