PP-OTD alum creates award-winning program and boosts her career

When Rachel Carpenter PP-OTD ’23 began working in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Newton-Wellesley Hospital 10 years ago, she knew the infants weren’t the only ones who needed attention. She understood the emotional toll that having a baby in the NICU takes since she went through it herself after her daughter was born.

Carpenter remembered how traumatizing that experience was when she returned to the NICU to work as an occupations therapist to support the neurodevelopment of the babies. “The first time I came into the unit, I kept looking at the moms and couldn’t stop thinking, how are they surviving this?”

Recognizing the significance of the work done in the NICU, she wanted to hone her skills further. She completed a comprehensive process to become a certified neonatal therapist and earned her post professional occupational therapy doctorate at the MGH Institute. For her capstone project she developed the Strong Foundations program, an occupational therapist-led, activity-based support group to address the increased risk of postpartum depression for mothers with babies in the NICU. 

“I wanted organic moments for these moms to meet each other, not in a typical support group but with occupational therapy behind it.” explained Carpenter. “In the class I am teaching them ways to calm the baby or change the diaper or do a bath so they are getting an education but they’re also in a room with other moms and can share some of their experiences.”

The classes also gave them the tools they need in their roles as moms, so they had confidence instead of feeling like the nurses performed those tasks better. There were activities to help them deal with stress by focusing on their breath and movement, and that let them gain support from the other moms while they decorated journals and baby footprints and made bracelets with their babies’ names on them. 

“I wanted them to be able to relax and have their minds off the stress,” said Carpenter. “One mom said it was literally the first time she had thought about herself since having her baby.”

Carpenter published an evaluation of the feasibility and effectiveness of the program in Maternal and Child Health; that won the Massachusetts Association for Occupational Therapy Outstanding Practitioner Award for Clinical Excellence and an MGB Pillars of Excellence Award for “Commitment to an Exceptional Patient Experience.” She was also awarded the Class of 2023 Innovation Award for her capstone project.

Carpenter credits her two mentors, Jessica Asiello and Colleen Craven, with helping her figure out how to operationalize the program, think about the detail, and add the theory behind it. She has created a booklet that other hospitals can use if they want to do replicate the program and is looking forward to working with other Mass General Brigham OTs on doing a bigger trial. 

This project and her decision to obtain her doctorate have produced additional benefits as well. Carpenter was splitting her time between the NICU and other medical units, but her experience helped her gain a full-time position in the NICU. 

“I don’t think I would have had the tools to advocate for myself to get this position if I didn’t have the skills I learned from the program,” Carpenter noted. “It gave me ideas, references, and resources that I could use to push for what I was trying to achieve.

“This project allowed me to focus on the NICU. I am so glad I did, because I really found my niche. I am so much more passionate about this than I’ve ever been about anything, and I don’t think I would have had the capacity to do it if I didn’t have the program.”

Carpenter continues to specialize in maternal mental health. She obtained a certification in perinatal mental health and is collaborating on an “Early Relational Health” initiative with Dr. Theresa Shanahan, pediatric hospitalist from Newton-Wellesley and Dr. Lise Johnson of Brigham and Women’s and Brazelton Institute, which emphasizes the importance of early parent-infant bonding.

“I feel like opportunities continue to open from just taking the leap in 2021 to obtain my doctorate,” she concluded.