Kayla Ford always wanted to return to Las Vegas, but didn’t know if a reunion with her hometown would be possible.

She started as an undergraduate at UNLV but followed her brother to Loras College, a small, liberal arts school in Iowa, where they both played volleyball. Yet the aspiring occupational therapist couldn’t stay away for long.

As she applied to programs across the country, her mom informed her that UNLV was starting an occupational therapy program of its own.

“It was never even a question of applying to UNLV’s OT program,” said Ford, now a part-time instructor in the School of Integrated Health Sciences. “I knew I had to come back.”

Ford was accepted as part of UNLV’s first cohort of occupational therapy students, housed within the School of Integrated Health Sciences. She admitted to herself that she was taking a chance by staking her future on a new program. 

She was a few months shy of finishing her bachelor’s at Loras when COVID-19 forced everyone to complete their schooling online. Ford finished her degree remotely and, shortly afterward, returned home to begin UNLV’s occupational therapy doctoral program over Zoom.

“I was already taking a risk by choosing a new program, and starting in the middle of a pandemic didn’t help,” she said.

Ford thought she would eventually pursue a career as a pediatric occupational therapist, inspired by a childhood family friend whose chromosome deletion left her wheelchair bound, unable to speak, and in constant need of medical care.

“She had therapists coming in and out of the house to care for her. That was my first exposure to medical intervention, and it had a really big impact on me,” Ford said.

As she progressed through the OT program, Ford became more comfortable with the rigorous curriculum and cherished the opportunities to see her classmates in person. She also shifted her focus from pediatric care to working with older patients, after beginning a doctorate-level health care program virtually during a global pandemic, learned the importance of prioritizing mental health in patient care.

That interest shaped her capstone project at Michael’s Angel Paws, a local nonprofit that helps individuals find happiness through their work with dogs. Ford explored how dog therapy can improve mental health and, ultimately, patient outcomes.

“Dogs are incredible creatures. They can detect chemical imbalances, and they know when we’re having anxiety attacks or seizures,” she said. “We have attachments to dogs, so whether they’re a companion, doing a service, or are just in the room with us, they provide a greater impact for our mental health than our physical health.”

Balancing Care and Teaching

Ford graduated from UNLV in 2023 and now works in the ICU at Spring Valley Hospital, specializing in acute care. Each day, she works with patients recovering from cardiac and respiratory issues and strokes, helping them relearn how to stand, get on and off the toilet, and improve their balance. She brings that hands-on experience into the classroom, where she teaches mental health-related courses in UNLV’s occupational therapy program.

“Teaching mental health can be a challenge because you have to welcome every thought, every bias, every experience somebody has ever had because it affects how they are,” she said. “And you have to teach by demonstrating that to the students. I like helping our students navigate so they learn the skills that they’ll use in practice.”

As a teacher, Ford takes extra time to work with her students. After class, they’ll sit in the classroom, sometimes up to an hour, reviewing clinical skills and bouncing ideas off one another to help improve their patients’ care.

She reminds them that they must take advantage of the opportunities they have working together; interactions she wishes she had more of when she began her journey as a UNLV occupational therapy student over Zoom during COVID-19.

She also knows how critical her students are to improving the healthcare outlook in a state desperate for more healthcare professionals, a state she was eager to return to after completing her bachelor’s degree in small-town Iowa.

“Every year I get more passionate about teaching because I know what I felt in that moment as a student,” she said. “I know the self-consciousness and the worry, and I want to give them confidence but also the skills to be empathetic and understanding OTs. I want our students to stay here because we need them.”