Hand Therapy Outline | CHT Exam Prep
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[00:00:00] If you're an occupational therapist looking to develop your skills in hand therapy. This podcast is for you, your host, Tron, occupational therapists, and certified hand therapists turned serial entrepreneur with her own therapy clinic in Miami. Hoang is an author and successful coach helping occupational therapists get jobs, develop their skills and become certified hand therapists so they can become experts in their.
Hoang worked with occupational therapists from across the United States and around the world. She talks about everything from hand therapy, skills, career development, leadership skills, money, mindset, and business. You two can become an expert certified hand therapist, business owner, and have more choices in your career.
Hey there, it's swang. If you are an occupational therapist and you are thinking about studying for the specialty of hand therapy to become a certified hand therapist. , but you're just like, Oh my God, there's so much stuff to know and you've, you're feeling kind of [00:01:00] overwhelmed like, Where do I even start?
Well, let me help you. I've got this outline that I've been working on, breaking it up into small chunks and bites, size pieces so that I can help you get rid of that overwhelm. Cause I hear it all the time. So I know that I felt like that and I think something like this may help. . So, this is my breakdown, right?
So there's, you know, one of the most important things about setting for the hand therapy exam, it's really, it's just about making you a better clinician, right? And it helps you to become a. A critical thinker and a decision maker in how you're helping your patients. Okay? So, we know that, Okay, so this is my study guide or my study breakdown.
So you have hands, I don't know, can you even see this? Let me see. So this is how I, [00:02:00] I'm breaking it. So you have hands, right? You have elbow and then you have shoulders. Right? Now the other thing that you also have that like a huge other subject are nerves. Let me, let me do this again. Hold on. Gotta rewrite.
I'm gonna rewrite this. So we're gonna have hands over here. We're gonna have elbow over here, we're gonna have shoulders, and then we're gonna have nerves. Nerves is a huge one. Now nerves come out of the neck, go down the arm through the elbow and affect the hand. So one of the things I do is I, when I studied, I separated nerves completely out on its own because there's a lot of understanding.
There's a lot of memorization I have due to then be able to [00:03:00] problem solve through. Certain cases, like we have a couple of cases right now and they're crush or hand injuries. I have a one that's a crush hand injury. I have one that's a crush elbow and it's affected the nerves. And so if you're looking at the nerves and how they work, it's going to mess up the hand somehow.
So it's, its, it gets its own separate category. And then what we're gonna do is we're gonna even chunk it down even further, right? So when it comes to everything, Most important thing is you need to know your anatomy. Okay? But what we're gonna do is we're gonna break it down even further, especially in the hand, right?
Especially in the hands. What we're gonna do is now, after I wrote all that stuff, we're gonna chunk it down even further. Especially in the hands, right in the hands. We're gonna chunk it down to fingers and thumb. . I always kid around with my kids that how many, how many digits do you have? Right? [00:04:00] You have 10 digits.
How many fingers do you have? You have four fingers on one hand, eight fingers total, and then two thumbs. So in the hand, you, you can separate it into like hands hands and thumb. You can also separate it into like metacarpal, which is like the middle part of your hand, and then it's not hand, it's part of the hands.
It's the wrist, right? And so, and the wrist is quite complicated. You know, you have eight bones, but within those eight bones you have tons of ligaments and all sorts of stuff. So we go ahead and we break down the fingers. You know, the digits, the metacarpal and the wrist. You can break down the, you know, big chunk of hands cuz that's what people kind of get overwhelmed with.
There's so much information. Now remember I've taken nerves out cuz that's gonna be its own separate category that we can study. Okay? And so let's start with, you know, fingers and thumb. First of all, what's the most important thing [00:05:00] is anatomy. , you really gotta get started on your anatomy, right? So you've gotta really know the structures and you've gotta know the muscles.
And that's one of the biggest, hardest areas is understanding the biomechanics of the hand, especially the p i p. So we're gonna break it down into anatomy once we break down. We're gonna chunk it out into these three categories and then we're gonna chunk it down even further. Like let's get started on anatomy.
And then from anatomy we can go into, if you know what's normal, then you could learn what's abnormal, right? So if you know what's normal, you can learn and see what's abnormal. So, know your anatomy. We can get started on phones, so like work our, our. Out so deep inside we have bones, and then we have ligaments, and then we have muscles, and then all the stuff that's surrounding all of that, right?
Once we know a lot of our anatomy, then we can go into the different problems, right? The more common problems. Carp [00:06:00] carpal tunnel. That's, that's actually a, I'm sorry. That's a, that's a nerve one. Let's, let's skip that one. Let's talk about fractures. . Let's talk about dislocations. Let's talk about arthritis.
Oh my god. Trigger finger. I might do a whole thing on trigger finger cuz I did one in my foundations of hand therapy course. So I might go ahead and maybe I'll do somebody, a couple of people were asking me about trigger finger, so I might just go ahead and do a whole separate video on that in itself.
Since I. Nowhere. The video, I've gotta look for that video from foundations of hand therapy. But regardless, we can talk about real specific diagnosis, real specific types of injuries, what kind of problems they can cause what kind of complications. And then after you learn about the diagnosis, then you can, you'll go into the treatment, right?
So if you know you're anatomy and then you know the problem, then you will know how to treat. Right, So then you can [00:07:00] go into treatment because then now in the treatment parts where you get to decide what to do based on your knowledge. So, this is one of the ways that I can help you to get rid of that overwhelm.
Let's get studying. Let's break it down into small by size, chunk size pieces. And when you do that, And you group 'em into small little groups that you can accomplish something, then we can take the overwhelm out of it and I can further help you get rid of the overwhelm by helping to explain some of the things that sometimes a little bit more complicated.
Cuz it feels like all this information is coming out of nowhere, but it's only complicated because it's new to you. Quite normal. So I hope this has helped you. My little chunking down outline helped you to think about getting started to study for the CHT board exam.
Hey, thanks for listening to Hoang's world podcast. If you are brand new to the hand therapy world, [00:08:00] head over to my website, www . Hand therapy secrets.com, where you can get started with some of our free guides and paid programs for both OTs and PTs diving into the world of hand therapy. Or if you've been listening for a while watching on our YouTube channel and you think you could benefit from developing and moving your career further along in hand therapy, reach out to me and my team at info @ Hand therapy.secrets.com and tell us exactly what you're looking for, By the way, if you know someone who could benefit from today's show, please share.
Thanks. See you on the next episode.
