Getting another degree and/or a speciality certification after recieving a Masters in Occupational Therapy

  When it comes to continuing education as an OT practitioner there are so many different options. There are options of continuing your education with an additional degree, specialty certifications, or just professional development courses. In order to keep my license I need to keep up-to-date with professional development by learning about new research and expanding on knowledge that I learned in school. However, I have thought about expanding my knowledge further beyond just professional development.

    Currently, getting an additional degree has not been on my mind because i'm strongly focusing on finishing my masters. With that being said, I really do love teaching others what I know and that's a big reason as to why I'm in this profession. If I had to get an additional degree, I would probably get an EdD because I love helping others feel confident in their knowledge and growth. With an EdD, I would be able to create a learning environment for future OT practitioners to flourish. I have been interested in all adult learning theories that I have learned so far and that is something that I would like to dig deeper into maybe down the road after I have thorough OT experience.

   Some thing that I have thought about that would be more realistic for me soon would be to receive a specialty certification. If I had an opportunity to receive a specialty certification, I would get an autism specialty certification. I think specializing in something like that is very important to be able to better understand the sensory system and how people with autism perceive information. I think that society greatly misunderstands people with autism, and I want to change the negative stigmas that surrounds this neurological condition. I believe there are so many gifts that are given to people with a diagnosis of autism. I think that a multitude of these special abilities can't be discovered because there is not a great understanding on how to communicate with all individuals who have autism and our world is simply just not built to accommodate these abilities. I would absolutely love to expand my knowledge on this subject and hopefully be able to create a positive impact for people with autism in today's world.