TWU Collaborates in Unique Hand Therapy Program

At the Texas Woman's University Houston Center, hands have joined to create something special. A joint effort between the TWU school of occupational therapy, the Houston-based Hope Star Hand Institute and HealthSouth Corporation, the hand therapy fellowship is an advanced three-month program for occupational therapists and physical therapists in hand rehabilitation.

"It's really a rather unique partnership between a corporation, a school of medicine and TWU," says Dr. Jaclyn Low, associate dean of the TWU Houston Center.

Initiated in January of 1998, the hand therapy fellowship is an intensive three-month program that admits small groups of students three times a year. The first eight weeks of the program take place at the TWU Houston Center and feature six-day weeks filled with lectures, labs, surgical rounds, research and supervised clinical experience. The third month of the program allows students to do a purely clinical internship at any one of the more than 1,000 HealthSouth facilities across the country.

Students who complete the program earn nine credit hours in occupational therapy, which they may put - through the M.A. program - toward either an M.A. in occupational therapy or transfer to another graduate program.

Dr. Low says that the program has become widely sought after.

"We've had just an overwhelming response to it," she says. "We've gotten interest from students all over the country, and we've had a number of international inquiries as well. Still, we're only taking six students each rotation. The reason why is there is so much supervised clinical experience going into it that it has to stay small in order to give the students the experiences they need."

Dr. Low says the hand therapy fellowship is a uniquely rewarding program.

"It's an opportunity to work with people who are nationally and internationally recognized in the field of hand surgery, rehabilitation and research, as well as an opportunity to gain an enormous amount of knowledge in a very short period of time," she says. "Mainly though, it's the expertise of the faculty that makes this program so wonderful, and the fact that a three-part partnership like this covers such a wide spectrum of practice."

- MICHAEL HILL

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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