Sarah Ewald

Sarah graduated in 1985, from the University of Oklahoma with a BS in Occupational Therapy. Her first position in Occupational Therapy was at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Dayton, Ohio USA. Following a year of acute care experience, she worked for 10 months on the Rehabilitation Unit in the same Hospital.

Her desire to see the world, then took her to Switzerland where she spent four years working first for the SUVA rehabilitation clinic and then for the Cantonal Hospital in Winterthur. In both positions she worked mainly with patients with hand injuries. During this time she also served as network coordinator for AOTA and was also a member of the Swiss OT association. She also co-designed and carried out a research study in Switzerland to establish grip strength norms with the Jamar Dynamometer for Swiss adults. The results of this study were published in Ergotherapie (the Swiss OT Journal) in 1991.

In 1991, she returned to the United States and headed up the Acute Care Occupational Therapy Department at Wake Medical Center in Raleigh, North Carolina for a year and half. In 1992 she passed the Hand Therapist Certification examination in the USA.

Family obligations brought a return to Switzerland in late 1993. From 1994-2008 she was worked for a Hand Therapy practice in Zürich, Switzerland. In 2008 she opened her own practice “City Handtherapie” in Zürich. From 1994-95 she was a member of the Board of the Swiss OT Association. From 1994-2000 she served as a member of the Certification Commission of the Swiss Hand Therapy Society. The Society certified its first group of Hand Therapists by exam in November of 2003. She was certified as a Hand Therapist, in 2003 by the Swiss Hand Therapy Association.

Since 1996 she has been teaching clinical continuing education courses for therapists. She currently teaches in Switzerland and Germany as well as being active in the establishment of a Hand Therapy program at the Zürich University of Applied Sciences in Winterthur, Switzerland.

Sarah has held different positions within IFSHT. She was elected at the IFSHT meeting in Edinburgh to the office of Historian for the term of 2004-2007, in Sydney to the office of Secretary General for the term 2007-2010 and in Orlando to the office of President-Elect for the term of 2010-2013. She is a member of both the Swiss and American Occupational Therapy Societies as well as the Swiss and the American Hand Therapy Societies.