OT alumnae share the lessons they learned in becoming successful entrepreneurs
By Christine E. Haines, MA, MOT, OTR/L
Many occupational therapists decide to open their own practices or other businesses, but the road to entrepreneurship can be a hard one. Three of our OT alumnae share their experiences and what they learned along the way.
Emilia Bourland, MOT ’10, OTR, ECHM
Higher Standards Caregiver Training
Emilia Bourland decided to start her own business when she saw needs for aging people and their caregivers that were not being addressed in the clinic. She states that she very much enjoyed working clinically, so it was a difficult choice for her to go into business ownership. However, her passion for holistic care and filling the needs of this population drove her to leave the medical model and go into business on her own. She says that her experience outside of the medical model has been like the “Wild West” with many well-meaning people attempting to fill the role of the occupational therapist, since there are no occupational therapists currently working in that role. She strongly believes that occupational therapists should be working outside the medical model box and works to advocate for occupational therapy to people she comes across in the community.
Bourland started her first business in 2019 focused on home modifications. However, she found that she had to use her own occupational therapy skills of adaptation and modification to adjust to lessons learned with this venture and is now focusing her business on providing caregiver training. Her advice to any occupational therapist wanting to start their own business is to first make sure that you care passionately and deeply about what you are doing. It can be a difficult process, and you need to have a clear vision of why the challenges you are facing are worth it. She also advises investing in business specific education and being flexible as the process unfolds.
Heather McBride, BS ’97, OTR
H.M. Health, Inc.
Heather McBride started her career as an occupational therapist providing clinical care in Traumatic Brain Injury. After finding a need to address injury prevention and ergonomics, she used her networking skills to assist companies with OSHA guidelines for occupational injury prevention. The companies she worked with began to value the unique contribution occupational therapy brought to employee injury prevention. “Employers and professional ergonomists found that occupational therapists were able to get people talking about their daily lives, not just their work lives, and made injury prevention that much better,” McBride states.
McBride started her company to fill the need for quality injury prevention programs in the corporate/industrial settings. She is proud to be an occupational therapy entrepreneur to “bring occupational therapists into a non-traditional role by using our skill sets to advance occupational therapy in different areas.” Currently, her mission is to help in the area of mental health by educating employees and managers on psychosocial risk and mental health aspects of employee assistance programs.
Amy Ornelas, MOT '02
D.O.T.S. for Kids, PLLC
Amy Ornelas always knew she wanted to work in pediatrics. When she graduated from TWU in 2002, she started working in pediatric clinics where she gained valuable clinical experience. She states she soon noticed that private occupational therapy clinics largely served children from higher socioeconomic backgrounds and felt the need to create a place where all children could get quality care. So, in 2008, Ornelas set out to meet this mission by creating her own business/clinic D.O.T.S., or Dallas Outpatient Treatment Services for Kids.
Ornelas comes from a non-profit background, but soon found that the care she desired to provide could not be sustained using this model. Therefore, it was important for her to partner with someone who had a strong business background and was lucky enough to find this in her husband. Ornelas states that her goal of providing services for all children required the ability to use Medicaid. But, this was not something she could immediately do, so she “stair stepped” her way to Medicaid by starting with a self-pay system and adding insurance companies one by one. Today, Ornelas runs a successful outpatient pediatric clinic with multiple occupational therapists, physical therapists and speech-language pathologists. She encourages anyone desiring to start their own business to gain an education in business or to find a partner with a strong business background.
Page last updated 7:07 PM, November 18, 2021