Therapist finds work rewarding, hands down

WASILLA — Shain R. ZumBrunnen says the test to become a hand therapist is just as hard as the test he took to become a occupational therapist.

Maybe harder.

“It’s got a real high failure rate,” said ZumBrunnen, co-owner of HealthQuest Therapy with his wife, Nisa ZumBrunnen. The business is located at the corner of the Parks and Palmer-Wasilla highways.

The test takes four hours and runs through 200 multiple-choice questions, he said. Most are targeted at a specific part of the body, but those taking the test don’t know which part going in.

“You might study up on the shoulder but they might ask you questions about a finger for 150 questions,” ZumBrunnen said.

He took the test in November 2007 and found out he’d passed a month later.

Now, he’s the only certified hand therapist in the Mat-Su Valley and one of only 10 in the state.

It wasn’t his first try. In 2006, ZumBrunnen took the test and found out just before Christmas he’d failed by one question.

“That was a sad day,” said Sheila Smith, office manager and medical biller for HealthQuest.

“I’d have rather missed it by 20 than by one,” ZumBrunnen said.

Although he knew he was one question away in 2006, this time around testers didn’t tell him how many questions he got right.

The new certification will give more credentialing to his clinic, he said. Patients have to be referred by their doctors and doctors look for people who know how to work with hands. He said some of the doctors who know he has the certification have already started sending patients his way.

“I believe we’ve seen a few extra referrals from these people,” ZumBrunnen said.

Not only that, but with the hand therapy certification, he said his life has gone full circle.

ZumBrunnen is a lifelong Wasilla resident. He lives on a piece of his grandparents’ original homestead on Wasilla-Fishhook Road. As a younger man he worked for Woodland Taxidermy; that is, until he developed carpal tunnel syndrome.

In taxidermy, ZumBrunnen said that “there’s a lot of punch work and heavy hand work.”

Recovering from his surgery, he worked with physical therapists and thought maybe he’d like to go into the field himself.

And so he did, graduating magna cum laude from the Casper, Wyo., campus of the University of North Dakota’s school of medicine in 1999.

“The goal was hand therapy all along,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.