Meet MSKTC Ambassador Annmarie Roth
- Annmarie Roth
Annmarie is a mother to two teenage sons and often is poolside in her free time to watch their water polo games and swim team events. Her husband is also an occupational therapist so even at home there is always ‘shop talk’. Annmarie is active in her church and her “Faith Walk with Jesus” which replenishes her in her quest to serve others.
Annmarie engages in nearly any water activity such as swimming, body surfing, kayaking, or snorkeling. She enjoys singing and has infrequently been involved in community theater and frequently attends live concerts.
She and her husband enjoy estate sales, auctions, and visiting botanical gardens. They also attend to their own beehive which helps to pollinate their fruit trees and produce honey. Their 100+ year old house keeps them busy with repairs, but also is a great meeting place to host family, friends, and coworkers.
Annmarie Roth Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Journey
Annmarie’s earliest exposure to the TBI world was through her brother who had a diving accident in their pool. She was only 8 years old at the time and understood little, only that afterwards he had difficulty with spelling and finding his way around new locations.
Flash forward to her second year working as an occupational therapist in 2009 and starting in-patient rehabilitation on a TBI diagnostic team. Her caseload consisted primarily of TBIs injured during active duty overseas. The trauma was often throughout their bodies, but came with the unique challenges of a TBI diagnosis with the most behaviorally challenging healing interval of Ranch IV to V.
Annmarie became passionate about assisting people with TBI during the initial recovery stage of refashioning their lives during the hospital rehabilitation. The focus of this care was to lay a foundation of skills in which they could re-engage in facets of their prior life while exploring new possibilities through therapeutic adaptations and the expansion of re-acquired routines. Annmarie spent the next 16 years passionately fulfilling this role.
In 2023 Annmarie transitioned to a leadership support role for her occupational therapy department, serving as an educational resource for therapists, offering concurrent therapy mentorship sessions and information regarding therapy approaches and the incorporation of technology within in-patient sessions and visual rehabilitation training.
What does Annmarie think of the quality, usefulness, and user-friendliness of the MSKTC resources?
Annmarie is very appreciative to MSKTC for developing such comprehensive and in-depth resources for clinicians like her to utilize in helping patients with TBI and their families. Having to locate a hodgepodge of educational material for patients and their caregivers can take up precious therapy time when that is unfortunately in short supply. MSKTC makes it easy and accessible!
Annmarie keeps an easy access folder of the printed handbook with MSKTC resources so all her fellow therapists and their patients can have that easy reference during a training session. She also loves that some of the MSKTC resources are topics that are more difficult to bring up or discuss when broached and are clearly accessible to patients. This allows an open pathway for further follow-up for issues of sexuality, depression, or behavior management.
Why does Annmarie want to be an MSKTC ambassador?
Annmarie wanted to become a MSKTC ambassador because she has a unique position to disseminate the MSKTC resources to her entire OT clinical department as well as to the university department, which has a vested interest in keeping current with the research and resources as new developments in the understanding and approach to TBI care evolve. As MSKTC works to update their resources with the most current research, it is valuable to work closely with them to provide her team with the best resources possible.
What has Annmarie done as a MSKTC ambassador?
As a recent Ambassador, Annmarie has been occupied with educating her OT department on what is available with emphasis on use of the easy access of TBI specific research like the free MSKTC research-based and user-friendly resources. She makes sure that incoming OT students will not only access the MSKTC resources but provide mini-in-services using the MSKTC resource to their staff (PT/OT/speech) under direction. Additionally, she is assisting her social work team in initiating a weekly on site TBI caregiver support group with the use of model systems information to draw from for discussion topics and recommendations.
Annmarie wants to make the use of the MSKTC resources and tools a second nature approach to their training with patients. She looks forward to becoming an online advocate for MSKTC within her sphere of influence.