They arrive in a taxi. As they walk up to the front door, Aisling Carey begins taking notes. She has a measuring tape in her pocket and she'll begin using this also. As the two of them go into the hallway, she notes the height of the light switch.

Carey wants to check how her patient will manage. From unlocking the front door, making a cup of tea, going upstairs, getting into the bathroom, Carey has to check every practical detail.

As an occupational therapist at Tallaght Hospital, her job can often involve a visit to the home of an elderly patient. "A lot of the patients would not be able to go home and look after themselves. You do a lot of work in co-operation with the social worker when it comes to discharge, if you have to plan to have some physical adaptation or organise meals on wheels," she explains.

"You have to be good with people, to be a good listener that hears what they want out of therapy and what's important to them for when they get home. You have to be patient. You have to be a good problem-solver and think of ways around difficulties that people might have and come up with solutions that would help them to live independently at home."

Occupational therapy is "a very practical profession. We look at everyday activities, we look at their everyday problems, functional difficulties that they might have. We look at the mobility problems, at everyday activities.

"You have to be physically strong," she adds. "It's a physically demanding job and it's emotionally demanding at times. And it's academically demanding as well."

Carey, from Glanworth near Fermoy in Co Cork, went to school in the town to Loreto Secondary School. She is newly qualified and explains that you have to have three years experience before you can become a senior occupational therapist.

Her interest in the area, she explains, is partly from working in summer clubs with people with physical disabilities while she was still at school. The club organised events and entertainment. Carey was also involved in a summer camp for children with learning disabilities. "I hadn't any experience but I just went along with a friend and got interested," she recalls.

She did physics and biology for her Leaving Certificate in 1995. And she did physics in the first year of the course in TCD. There were 30 in the class - all young women - who started out on the four-year course.

The first two years were "very academic". Second year was "the toughest", she says, because subjects such as neuro-anatomy and physiology were "difficult and timeconsuming". Then over the course of third and fourth years, students complete three 10-week placements. For her 10-week placement "in a physical setting", Carey was sent to the Meath Hospital in Dublin. Then she did ten weeks in St Loman's Psychiatric Hospital, Dublin. Her third placement was in St Vincent's Vocational Training Centre on the Navan Road, Dublin, which is a centre for young people with learning disabilities.

During this time students have to complete a research project that is related to occupational therapy. Carey did "a joint project on leisure of the elderly, looking at what older people in rural areas did compared with urban areas".

She started working in Tallaght Hospital last summer. She wears a pair of dark green trousers and a white tunic with green piping. Her working day starts at 8.30 a.m. and runs until 4.30 p.m. "No two days are the same," she says of her work. She is currently in the "age-related health care ward" which involves elderly patients who can come in with a variety of conditions and illnesses. "The main goal is to enable them to get back functioning and doing every day activities."