When people stay in the hospital after injury, illness, or surgery, the Occupational Therapist (OT) is the professional who makes sure these patients can go home and get around their house again. The OT has a very practical job: making sure people can cook, clean, shower, get dressed, and many other activities of daily living.

Inna Wines is the newest inpatient OT on the medical/surgical unit at Estes Park Health.

“My family and I have been coming to Estes Park since I was born,” Wines explained. “Every year there were family reunions, family vacations. I knew that eventually I wanted to move to Colorado. I wasn’t sure it would be Estes Park specifically. It all just kind of worked out. In June, I was here for a girls’ trip. I decided, ‘I don’t want to leave. I want to stay. I want to figure out how to live here.’ I quit my job. I applied for new jobs and luckily found housing. My manager at EPH called and asked if I wanted a full-time job. I said, ‘Yes. That would be amazing.’”

Wines moved to Estes Park two months ago. She has enjoyed the slower pace, and what she describes as a good work/life balance.

“I grew up always knowing that I wanted to do some sort of service for others,” Wines said. “I wasn’t sure exactly what it was going to be. Healthcare always spoke to me.”

Wines and her brother were adopted from Russia. He has a lot of sensory issues and developmental issues and went to occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech therapy growing up.

“He wouldn’t participate in his therapy unless I was part of it,” she noted. “I really got to see what they did, how it contributed to his life, how it changed the way he was able to socially interact with people.”

Wines originally thought she would go into pediatric OT because of her experience with her bother. But she did an acute care rotation in Dallas (where she is from) and fell in love with the geriatric population.

She earned her undergraduate degree in Public Health from the University of Arkansas. She went to Abilene Christian University (ACU) in West Texas for her master’s degree in occupational therapy. Before she moved to Estes Park, she worked at UT Southwestern in Texas for the last three years.

“I kind of got burned out just because I was seeing lots and lots of people throughout the day,” Wines stated. “I just knew I wanted a change.”

Since starting at EPH, Wines has helped many kinds of patients, from tourists who have been hiking and have fallen and hurt themselves to people who need hip or knee replacement surgery. OTs also worked with medication management and help patients with fine motor skills.

“The big focus is making sure everyone can get home,” Wines emphasized. “But if they can’t, OTs provide social workers, doctors, and nurses the information they need to decide if a patient needs to go to a skilled nursing facility, a nursing home, or assisted living.”

The goal of Occupation Therapy is consistent. Keep everybody as independent as possible.