Season 5 Episode 3: Finding Sustainability in Regional Private Practice
In this episode of OT Coaching Confidential, Alyce is joined by Ruby, an experienced occupational therapist working across a broad regional caseload while building her sole trader business alongside part-time hospital work.
Ten years into her OT career and around 18 months into self-employment, Ruby reflects on what it has been like to grow quickly without a clear structure to hold the work. With paediatrics, driving assessments, NDIS work, and support at home all sitting under one business, she finds herself overbooked, stretched thin, and carrying too many competing priorities at once.
Together, Alyce and Ruby unpack how overwhelm can emerge when growth outpaces planning. Rather than framing this as burnout, the conversation focuses on workload volume, blurred boundaries, extensive travel, and the absence of a clear plan for how different types of work fit together.
This episode is a grounded, practical conversation for therapists who are established in private practice but feeling overwhelmed by the complexity of their caseload, unsure how to create clearer structure, and wanting to work in a way that feels more contained and sustainable.
In this episode, we explore
• The realities of regional practice and the impact of long travel days
• Holding a mixed caseload and the cognitive load of constant context switching
• How rapid growth can lead to overwhelm without clear systems
• Treating reports, planning, and admin as protected clinical work
• The tension between flexibility and sustainability in sole trader life
• Making values-aligned decisions about scope, income streams, and capacity
Practical recommendations discussed:
• Using a master timetable to group similar work and reduce cognitive load
• Protecting non face to face time so reports and planning are not booked over
• Planning leave and catch-up time intentionally using a yearly calendar
• Narrowing clinical scope to improve sustainability
• Completing a time and task audit before seeking admin support
• Staying connected with peers or mentors to avoid holding decisions internally
Resources mentioned:
• Getting the Admin Support You Actually Need – a workshop focused on clarifying support needs before outsourcing admin
Brought to you by Alyce Svensk at The OT Coach Australia.
Supporting occupational therapists and allied health professionals to build confidence, clarity, and connection through mentoring, supervision, workshops, and The OT Coach Academy.
If this conversation resonated with you and you’d like support through supervision, business mentoring, or reflective practice, visit www.theotcoach.au to explore how The OT Coach Australia can support you.
