Women Owned Business Spotlight – Occupational Therapy of Delaware

Tracy Dissinger and Libby Tenbusch not only operate a female-owned occupational therapy office, they manage an all female staff

Tracy Dissinger is celebrating her 30^th year as an occupational therapist, opening Occupational Therapy of Delaware over eight years ago. According to Dissinger, she told her daughter, Libby Tenbusch, that if she was accepted to OT school, Dissinger would open her own practice.

“I had worked in rehab facilities, nursing homes, outpatient practices and I was kind of like, okay, that’s good. I’ve had a good career, 20 years was good,” Dissinger said. “Then, Libby was accepted to OT school, and I knew I had to do this for myself.”

Dissinger originally opened the practice for hand therapy and a focus on orthopedic and neuro practice because that was her background. She hired two tother therapists before her daughter came on board two years ago.

“They all wanted to work with children and what was my once 100 percent adult practice is now 60 percent adults and 40 percent kids,” Dissinger said. “There are kids in and out of here all the time now.”

One of the unique tools they use in their therapy is their “occupational therapy cats,” Knox and Douglas who they refer to as the “lads.” Dissinger finds cats to be great ambassadors for special needs children.

“If your hands are quiet and your feet are quiet, no screaming or slapping, the cats want to hang out with you, but if someone was stomping, screaming and running around, the cats disappear,” Dissinger said. “We’ve brought out dogs in but it is a disaster. They love running and screaming, they think it is playing. We have even fostered some kitties, and we’ve had several families take home a cat, so we feel like we are serving two purposes.”

The entire staff at Occupational Therapy is female, offering a wide range of services, including speech therapy, to adults and children. Dissinger joked that they prefer the female staff and only call Tenbuch’s father, Mark, or her husband, Chris, to fix broken stuff or bring them coffee. Dissinger pointed out that she, her father and Tenbusch are all Thomas Jefferson University graduates.

“I swore up and down that I never, ever wanted to be an OT. I didn’t want to be anything, no offense to her, but, I didn’t want to be anything that was going to be exactly like mom. And then once it came down to actually deciding what I wanted to do, it was the only thing that I found interest in. I explored speech therapy, but I can’t do anything that involves the mouth and swallowing things of that nature, so that wasn’t for me,” Tenbusch said. “And then I had my clinical rotation in school and all through school, I did not want to work with kids. That’s not what I want. I was put in the Cape Henlopen School District for my clinical rotations in school, and actually fell in love with it and texted mom, I think week one was like, so when I’m done with school, we’re bringing on kids. We’re doing this.”

Dissinger and Tenbusch are both shocked at the level of need among children for occupational therapy. They feel it may be that parents are starting to seek out more services or if diagnoses are better, but more children are seeking occupational therapy services.

“People hear “occupational” and think it is work related, but we work with kids who have motor control issues, kids who cannot stand to have clothes on them, they can’t stand hot or sharp things, loud noises,” Dissinger said. “I was kind of that kid, and we had OT ladies come to the school and they were the fun play ladies. I was the kid who hated tags in my clothes, birthday parties were too noisy. If I am hot, leave me alone. If I am hot, leave me alone. If I’m hungry and hot, steer as far away as possible.”

In addition to providing services in the office, Dissinger is also a certified driver educator and believes she is the only one in the state. She treats people 16 or older who, for one reason or another, have not passed driver’s education. In some cases, they have not been offered the classes, often because they are autistic.

“I had a lady in here today who had a stroke, and she wants to drive, so I told her we would talk,” Dissinger said. “I run her through the process and then I work with Don Parsley, a driver’s education teacher, who has an equipped car so he can do the road testing.”

Occupational therapy is primarily a female field, Dissigner and Tenbusch explained. Men in the field is growing, but not quickly. Tenbusch had 31 students in her graduating class and only two were men. She believes men lean toward physical therapy rather than occupational therapy. Dissinger stated that there is no workout equipment in their practice.

“If you need to work out, go to a gym, that is not what we are here for,” Dissinger said. “Girl power works very well for us here and the fact that you go to school for a very long time to do this may have something to do with it as well.”

Occupational Therapy of Delaware is located at 550 South Dupont Boulevard in Milford, Suite E. For more information, call 302-491-4813 or visit them online.