An interview with Linsey Porter — Occupational Therapy Assistant and Rehabilitation Specialist with nearly 12 years of experience across inpatient, outpatient, and telehealth settings.
Introduction
Getting a prosthesis or orthotic device is only one part of the journey after limb loss. The real challenge often begins afterward — finding the right rehabilitation and ensuring insurance actually covers the care and devices you need. To help the MyLimb community better understand this process, we spoke with Linsey Porter, an occupational therapy assistant based in Northwest Indiana who has spent nearly 12 years working across the full spectrum of rehabilitation care.
Linsey’s experience spans multiple settings. She spent six years working in inpatient rehabilitation and skilled nursing facilities, first as a treating therapist and later as a director, overseeing an orthopaedic rehab unit that served amputees and patients recovering from joint replacements and strokes. She later spent nearly three years running telehealth visits that provided medical justifications for prosthetic and orthotic devices to clinics across the United States — a program that supported between 10,000 and 15,000 patients each year. During that time, she also earned certification in billing and coding, giving her a rare understanding of the administrative side of rehabilitation care.
Today, Linsey works with Restorative Health, helping develop a specialized therapy division designed to address a major gap in the healthcare system: the disconnect between therapists and prosthetists. Her work is also deeply personal. Linsey’s daughter was born with an extra toe on each foot that affected her growth plates, requiring years of orthotics and surgeries. “It hits home for me,” Linsey says. “Being able to make the process easier for these patients — especially for parents who have no idea what’s going on.”
Foundation: A Relationship That Puts You at Ease
When Linsey talks about finding the right therapist, she doesn’t begin with qualifications or clinic reputation. She begins with something much simpler — the relationship. “The one-on-one conversation matters,” she explains. “Making sure the therapist and patient connect, that the patient feels seen and heard. When a patient feels comfortable, they’re calmer mentally. They’re more willing to push themselves and work harder, and that’s when you start to see real outcomes.”
She has also seen the opposite, particularly in skilled nursing facilities where therapists are under constant time pressure. When patients feel rushed or unheard, anxiety builds and progress slows.
The therapists who succeed in this space are often the ones willing to take a few extra minutes to listen — even if it means the patient doesn’t complete every exercise that day. Sometimes what a patient needs most isn’t another activity. It’s reassurance and understanding.
“It really is 90 percent mind over matter,” Linsey says. “It’s not about what you can’t do. It’s about remembering that you can.”
Why Specialisation Matters
There is a significant difference between a general therapist and one who specializes in limb loss rehabilitation.
In school, physical and occupational therapists learn about many different areas — strokes, cardiac care, orthopaedics, pediatrics, and more. But prosthetic and orthotic devices require a level of understanding that goes far beyond the basics.
A therapist who is unfamiliar with these devices may unintentionally teach movement patterns that work well for someone with all their limbs but are counterproductive, or even harmful for someone using a prosthesis. When this happens, patients return to their prosthetist with habits that need to be corrected.
“As a result,” Linsey explains, “the prosthetist ends up becoming the therapist because the therapist wasn’t equipped to handle the device.”
Prosthetic devices are not simple tools, and they are far from inexpensive. Therapists working with limb loss patients need to understand how the device functions, how to recognize when something is not fitting properly, and when to involve the prosthetist. That expertise usually comes only with experience and specialization.