Pre-Health Titans! Are you curious about a healthcare career and passion that is hands-on and steady growing?! Pre-Health Director and Advisor Carmen Gamlin spoke with Rebecca Spragg, MSPO, CPO Certified Prosthetist and Orthotist, Assistant Professor & Program Coordinator at Eastern Michigan University about an amazing Healthcare Profession: Orthotics and Prosthetics! Eastern Michigan University has the only Master of Science in Orthotics and Prosthetics in the state of Michigan! Here are the highlights from their interview!
- Pre-health students will launch careers with many professionals on the healthcare team. Please share what a Prosthetist and Orthotist does and what populations they serve.
Prosthetic and Orthotics is one of the Allied Health fields, similar to physical therapy and occupational therapy. We work in particular with in Prosthetics patients who’ve lost a limb, either an arm or a leg. In Orthotics, we work with patients who just need a little bit more help functioning with their arms or their legs or even their spine!
In prosthetics we make artificial limbs, prosthetic legs… and in orthotics, its all of the bracing. So everything from back braces, arm braces, leg braces. Most people think of foot orthotics or shoe inserts that they get so we make all of these things.
We work across the age spectrum from newborn babies with clubfoot all the way up to elderly patients who maybe diabetic with amputations or need spinal bracing because they have fractures from falls…So it’s a really wide range, across ages and a lot of different diseases that we work with as well.
- What skills does someone going into this field need to have?
The skills you really need to be successful in OP are having really good written and verbal communication. Were a healthcare team, we work with patients. You need to be able to write really good chart notes for insurance companies. You need to be able to have really good explanations and conversations with your patients and with the physicians and nurses and therapists. So having really good communication, which can come from any sort of undergrad background.
[Also] really good problem solving. Every patient is a little different and being able to come u with solutions that will work for them is really important and then teamwork. It is a big team that we work on so those are probably the top three general skills you need and you can get those with any sort of undergrad background.
Some students will come from engineering so have a really strong math background and some students will come from psychology and will have more of those soft skills background and we work with all of those students to get them where they need to be in the field.
- What is the master’s program at EMU like and what are the prerequisites?
There are; we require a college level math course that include trigonometry, biology, chemistry, and physics for the science courses. Anatomy and Physiology is also a requirement and two psychology classes or a psychology and a sociology class.
We take any intro level; they don’t need to be the advanced chemistry. Physics 1, Chemistry 1 and Intro to Biology those are all accepted.
4. What should a prospective student do to learn more?
*Bonus: Dr. Spragg explains the difference between an Orthotist and Prosthetist!
If you are in need of pre-health advising and plan to be a University of Detroit Mercy student then schedule an appointment with Carmen Gamlin via https://calendly.com/prehealthadvisor
