Maggie McKay (Host): Welcome to Stoughton Health Talk. I'm your host, Maggie McKay. Today we're going to find out what rec therapy is with recreational therapist Elena Hoke, thank you so much for being here today.

Alayna Hoch, BHS, CTRS: Thanks for having me.

Maggie McKay (Host): So let's just dive right in with what exactly is recreational therapy and how would you describe it to someone who's never heard of it before?

Alayna Hoch, BHS, CTRS: I feel like I'm so used to explaining what it is since it's not such. Well known profession. So usually what I say when people ask is I say that it's a, healthcare profession that uses evidence-based recreational activities to enhance the quality of life and wellbeing for specific populations.

So that's usually my broad one. And then people start asking questions. So I kind of talk about the different populations that I'm specifically in mental health, specifically geriatrics. but rec therapists can work with individuals like children or geriatrics with specific physical disabilities, intellectual disabilities.

So it's kind of a very wide range of people you can work with. But you're overall just working with them, doing specific recreational and leisure activities that will enhance their wellbeing. So that could be like their cognitive skills, their cognitive wellbeing, their emotional wellbeing, physical wellbeing, stuff like that.

So it's really a wide scope of things that I do with this profession. But there's a lot that goes into it that people don't realize. But that's kind of a broad explanation of what it is.

Maggie McKay (Host): What are the educational requirements and where did you earn your degree?

Alayna Hoch, BHS, CTRS: So I earned my degree at University of Wisconsin Lacrosse. So lacrosse is one of the few schools in Wisconsin, like the UW schools in Wisconsin that offer the rec therapy program, and they're very well known for that program. So when I started at UW lacrosse, I started, just as an undergrad classes. I was undecided for a while.

but once I made the switch to go into the rec therapy program, there's four different boxes they call it, of classes to take. So you have to meet all of those class requirements. and do all those projects and like your capstone and stuff like that. And at the very end, your senior year, you have to complete a, I wanna say it's 500 hour or something like that.

It's a very large amount of hours. an internship where you shadow, A-C-T-R-S, which is a certified Therapeutic Recreation specialist, and gain information through them and kind of hands-on experience. a population or a setting that you're maybe not used to or something like that. But once you're done with your internship, feel very proud of yourself.

and then you graduate, you get your bachelor's degree, which is a degree that you get for this, recreational therapy. you get a Bachelor's of science and health, and then after you graduate, you have to take your certification test. So this is after you graduate. So the certification exam just kind of proves that you're able to provide these services to clients, you're legally allowed to.

So once you get that certification and pass that board exam, you are ready to go and practice rec therapy in the world. But with that, you have it is you have to keep your certification updated. It's a five year cycle, so you have to do continuing education. in that five year course. So there's quite a bit that goes into the profession.

Maggie McKay (Host): That's a big time investment, so you must have really been passionate about it. Elena, what drew you to become a recreational therapist?

Alayna Hoch, BHS, CTRS: So I was very, having a very hard time figuring out what I wanted to do in college. I was undecided for the longest time my freshman year. I just, nothing really ever stuck with me. And I was gonna go to psychology route, which kind of links in with rec therapy. but I was going through the list of majors with my mom at the time and like, what can I pick that just screens me?

'cause I wanna do something that I'm passionate about and that I love doing every day. so we were looking through like all the psychology related ones and then she clicked on the rec therapy tab and you're book. This sounds kind of perfect for me. Like that's everything I love to do. I love to help people.

I love to do leisure, recreation, that type of thing. It just felt like a perfect mesh for me and my beliefs and my alignment, that type of thing. It just felt like it, it found me. I didn't quite find it, it found me. so then after that I immediately went to go into the rec therapy program, take the intro class, and after that I just.

stuck with it and I found that I loved the profession and once I got into the field as an aide during college and actually working with patients and shadowing underneath that CTRS, it just kind of, it locked it in for me. That that's what I wanted to do with my career. it was kind of a very cool experience.

Maggie McKay (Host): I love that. Leave it to moms to help. Guide you, right?

Alayna Hoch, BHS, CTRS: She knows everything right.

Maggie McKay (Host): Yep. So, you touched on this a little bit, but let's talk more about, you said you work on the Jerry Psych unit at Stoughton Health. Can you describe what that is?

Alayna Hoch, BHS, CTRS: Yeah, so our geriatric psychiatry unit, has at the hospital in Stoughton. So we're a very small unit, about 10 beds, but it's specifically for individuals 55 and older that. Come with different mental health diagnoses. So they come there, it's an inpatient psych unit, so they come there for a short stay to just kind of help them feel better and get themselves on the right track.

And with that, my role is to help in that process of getting them back home and getting them back in a safe place. So what I do with them is I do an initial assessment with them. I kind of get to know them a little bit, figure out what they like, what they don't like. kind of their abilities, what they can do, what they would like to do, stuff like that.

And then throughout their stay, I work with 'em. We do different activities every day. I can touch base on my favorite ones in a little bit here, but every day I'm on the unit and I am face-to-face with patients, working in different situations, doing different activities, kind of modifying them for each person, but.

I just really like them to be involved in things. I think that's really important, especially with mental health and healing and that sort of thing. Keeping your mind busy definitely speeds up that healing process and makes you just feel a little bit better.

Maggie McKay (Host): Right. Well, what are some examples of activities that you do with patients and how do those activities support their healing or wellbeing?

Alayna Hoch, BHS, CTRS: Absolutely. So lately, well, it kind of depends on the group. That's the thing I like about this population and this unit is that it's a small group so I can kind of tailor things specifically to each person. So say a couple weeks ago we had a group that really liked doing like balloon volleyball. So that was a big thing we would do.

We would start our morning with. Balloon volleyball, or we would do a chair stretch kinda to get us going in the morning. we'll do like current event groups in the morning, kind of keep up to date with what's going on in the world. it really depends on the group. We have, we do arts and crafts quite often, like expressive arts, to kind of express how they're feeling through painting or through sculpture, sculpting, that type of thing.

there's a lot of ladies that like to teach me new card games. Which is always fun. I would, I think I know them all and then the next day I am learning a new one. So that's always fun. trivia is a big one too. we've done jeopardy before. We've done so many different things, movie nights. It's honestly, the possibilities are endless, especially with the holidays coming up.

There's so much to do. It's awesome.

Maggie McKay (Host): That's so fun. I bet it's really rewarding because it seems like it would be different every day. It would never get boring.

Alayna Hoch, BHS, CTRS: Definitely different every day.

Maggie McKay (Host): What impact have you seen recreational therapy make in the lives of patients? Any memorable moments that stand out to you?

Alayna Hoch, BHS, CTRS: Yeah. So with the activities that we do, I've noticed that some people don't quite see it as. They see it more as you're just doing activities every day. And I think that once I get connected with those patients, they see more that the benefit that it's bringing them. So they'll come in and they will say, I had one patient that I'm thinking of specifically a year ago, and she came in and she said, I don't wanna do anything.

Like I, I'm not feeling very good, like this isn't for me. So on and so forth. And then I slowly kind of introduce things to them that they may or may not like. They say, I've never tried this before, or something like that. but then you just kind of see them grow confidence over time, which is one of my favorite things.

They grow confidence in their skills, in their conversation skills or social skills, cognitive skills. I just, I love seeing that growth from when they first came. To the day of their discharge and knowing that maybe they knew have a new leisure skill that they're gonna take home and try and to help them feel a little bit better when they're home.

So I think just seeing that progress is definitely one of my favorite things. And that shows how much it benefits the patients.

Maggie McKay (Host): I can imagine. what is the typical length of stay for patients or is everybody different?

Alayna Hoch, BHS, CTRS: It's different. It's typically. wanna say the average is about two weeks. It could be shorter, it could be longer, but usually it's not more than a month or so. They're usually pretty short term stays, but average I'd say is about two weeks. So you kind of really get to know the people in those two weeks.

Maggie McKay (Host): So it's like a reset, kind of like you said earlier to get back on track. Elena, in closing, is there anything else you'd like to add that you'd like people to know?

Alayna Hoch, BHS, CTRS: I just wanna say, so I get a lot of comments. I talked about this a little earlier. I just wanna say that there's so much more to rec therapy than a lot of people think. It's not as surface level as a lot of people think. They say you're just doing activities all day. You get to play games all day. Must be nice.

But there's really a lot that goes into it because with rec therapy, you're also helping them set goals for themselves. you may look at us during group and see we're playing Uno, and you think, oh, they're just having fun playing Uno. But there's more to it than that. Like, we're working on problem solving skills, number recognition, color recognition, working on those goals of participating appropriately in a social group.

Like I just think it's important that people know that there's so much more to it. It's so much more beneficial than people realize.

Maggie McKay (Host): Absolutely. Well keep up the good work. I mean, what a great career. How rewarding. this has been so interesting and informative. Thank you so much. I hope we see you again.

Alayna Hoch, BHS, CTRS: Yeah. Thank you.

Maggie McKay (Host): Again, that's Elena Ho. To learn more, please visit stoughton health.com. If you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels and check out our entire podcast library for topics of interest to you. Thanks for listening to. Stoughton Health Talk, a podcast from.