Amanda Varner
A hand that will not close is not a small problem. It is your job, your buttons, your steering wheel, your coffee cup. Amanda Varner has pointed her whole education at that. She studied kinesiology with a minor in psychology at Missouri Southern State University, graduating in 2022, then earned her Doctorate of Occupational Therapy from Baylor University in 2024. She is pursuing her Hand Therapy Certification, is enrolled in a hand fellowship, and has completed an upper extremity dry needling course. The result is an occupational therapist who can tell you what is actually limiting your grip and what the plan is to change it.
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
What guides the work.
Kindness, integrity, compassion and courage. Amanda names those four, and in a treatment room they stop being abstract. Kindness is the patience for the slow weeks that hand recovery always has. Integrity is telling you honestly where your progress actually sits. Compassion is remembering that the injury interrupted a whole life, not just a joint. Courage is being willing to change a plan that is not working instead of running it out to the end.
Off the clock.
Life beyond the treatment table.
Away from the clinic, Amanda reads, watches a fair amount of television, and spends her time with her husband, their friends and her dogs.