Sensing OT

ICEhould Be Golfing  The easy to make therapeutic game to help strengthen upper body muscles and increase balance. Great for people who are paraplegic and golf lovers!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ylc3q5nx8zY

Neuronote #5 Until I Say Good-Bye by Susan Spencer-Wendel  I read  Until I Say Good-Bye , which is a memoir written by a highly awarded journalist during her battle with ALS. As I have said many times before, the best way to learn about a disease or injury is to step into that person's shoes. There is no way to truly understand what a disease like ALS is like unless you have experienced it for yourself or seen a love one suffer through it. Susan wrote this book in such an elegant way, it is hard not to develop a new found perspective from it. While reading this book, I was able to take so many different perspectives from it. I could see it from the point of view of an OT, a daughter, a friend, and a person with the disease. Susan also wrote this memoir in way that I could honestly step in her shoes and feel the emotions she was feeling. Not only did I learn so must about the disease itself, but I learned more about the perspective of someone who is terminally ill....

Using a Universal Cuff For Everyday Activities  When I first learned about a universal cuff, I thought that it was an amazing idea and adaptive tool. A universal cuff seems rather easy in theory, but I soon realized that nothing is as easy as it sounds. When I first tried to use it, I thought that it was not to bad. After about ten seconds of using it, it became a lot more difficult than I assumed it would be. The fork or pencil would slip out of the cuff, I would have to turn my whole arm certain ways to do particular actions, and I had to adapt every aspect of the activity besides just to grip aspect of it. I used a universal cuff to eat dinner, write my name, and type for one minute. I choose to do this experiment so I could understand on a first hand basis what it is like to have to use an adaptive tool to do simple tasks like eat. I am glad I did it, because it was definitely not as easy I expected it would be. As an occupational therapy student, I feel as though physical...

One of the emerging fields for occupational therapy is childhood obesity. I find this to be very important because obesity in America is becoming more and more prevalent. This is not only affecting adults, but children as well. I think part of the problem is because of parent's bad habits, as well as technology. Parents often times give their children their bad habits and almost always give them their health habits. A child is not gonna make a salad when their parents are making chicken tenders for dinner. More often than not, parent's just put their child in front of an iPad and hope they stay quite. The value of playing outside has been lost and this is something that OT's can advocate for and educate parents about. I think advocating is a major way OT's will work in this field. Children do not understand the importance of eating well and exercising if it is not taught to them. If a child's parents do not value the importance of health, the children are being set ...

A very important thing to remember as a practitioner is the AOTA Code of Ethics. This provides a guide line for OT's to help the recognize and resolve ethical dilemmas, practice at the expected standard, and educated their clients. There are seven principals that each address a specific aspect of the correct behavior. Principal 1: Beneficence OT practitioner will contribute to good health and well fare of the client. This includes treating the client fairly and equitably, advocating for services that are needed, promoting health and wellness, and to charge fees directly relating to the services provided. An example of this is helping a client who can no longer pay for services, giving them home therapy treatment but not charging them. Principal 2: Nonmaleficence The practitioner will not inflict harm on the client. This includes avoiding exploiting the client physically, emotionally, physiologically, socially, sexually, or financially. An example of this is referring a cl...

Today I was doing a workout class with one of my friends who is going to school to be teacher. Even though she is very educated, we both have two totally different areas of knowledge. During the class the teacher kept telling us to adduct and abduct our legs/arms, make sure our foot was flexed or extended, and so on. She also kept referring to our muscle groups in very specific terms. Anytime she would use this terminology, my friend would have to completely stop her workout and watch the instructor so she could make sure she was doing the right thing. At the end of the workout, I asked if she knew what any of those words meant and she told me she didn't and it made her ability to do the workout more difficult. I think very similar to health literacy. My workout buddy wants to be able to maintain her health, but it is made significantly more difficult by words that she does not know and does not necessarily need to know for her profession. The lack of clarity could lead her to no...

Ted Talk: Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly: Be passionate. Be courageous. Be your best.             I watched a Ted Talk on TBI about Gabby Gifford, a congresswoman, and her husband, Mark Kelly, point of view. Gabby was shot in the head and is still recovering from her injury. This was a good way to learn first hand about what it is like to experience a traumatic brain injury. This Ted Talk helped me understand better what is like to live with a traumatic brain injury. Gabby says that the worst part of her injury is not being able to communicate her thoughts and feelings, due to her aphasia. When she first began her recovery, she was attached to the word “chicken”, which her and her husband now laugh about. She is unable to move her right arm, yet she’s more concerned about her lack of communication. I found this to be very interesting, because both of those things are so difficult to deal with, yet she’s more concerned with c...

I have been in OT school for four months and I find it amazing how well my OT skills are beginning to form. This morning I was in the living room with my family and a little boy came on the TV who did not have fully developed arms. He had learned how to play basketball and was really good at it, even though he was much more limited than his teammates. The interviewer asked the boy why he would not just play soccer instead, because that would make a lot more sense. The light in the boys eyes dropped and he looked at the interviewer and told him that he loved basketball. I was immediately baffled by the fact that the interviewer would even say that to a child. Why should he have to play soccer if that's not his favorite sport? What is so wrong with him adapting to play basketball? While I was expressing my thoughts and concern about this interview my dad looked at me and asked why it was such a big deal, because it does make sense for him to play soccer instead. I explained to my...

When I first began shadowing occupational therapist, I remember meeting a girl who had recently graduated. She was very nice and constantly told me how much she loved her job. Towards the end of the day, I heard her in her office on the phone saying "the only bad part about this job is all the documentation". I have always wondered about what makes it so bad. Regardless of how tedious and annoying it may be, documentation is a very important aspect for being an OT. This is crucial for ethical and legal reasons. Documentation is always important for insurance companies. If a practitioner is not properly documenting, their lack of proof could be the defining line of an insurance company continuing or discontinuing payments. It is also important to be able to efficiently and accurately treat the clients, by having the details of their previous sessions. For me, I think one of the most important reasons to document is to be able to fully remember what happened in a session. M...

Universal design is the design of products and the enviorment to be accessible by all people. I find this to be a very interesting concept, because the more I observe my enviorment, the more I notice how far away we are from this. When I first learned about universal design, one of my initial thoughts was that UT's campus was definitely universally designed. I mean, there's handrails on the toilets and ramps by the stairs, that's the prime example of a universal design. Under further inspection, I realized I was completely wrong. When you get off the elevator, there is a giant gap and uneven surface. How is a person in a wheel chair supposed to easily get over a gap, when the elevator is their only way to get on the upper levels. If you go into the general education building, you have to go up a ramp that has multiple turns. If you're in a wheel chair, making a turn in a tight area is not ideal. Even though places have designs that technically make is accessible, they s...

I always find it to be really interesting when I can see core concepts of occupational therapy at work in health care professions in general. When going through my grandmother’s Leukemia, I was able to see the importance of client-centered practice. One of the first things my father said when he met her oncologist was he was the only doctor they saw who actually cared about what my grandmother wanted. He was the one who worked with her when my family was deciding between home health and hospice. My family had a bit of a disagreement on which was the best option. Once he realized the constant disagreement, he ended up coming in and thoroughly explaining the difference before asking what she wanted. She wanted hospice and this ended up being the best option for her. My grandmother had many hospice nurses coming in and out, so while I was there I would have casual conversation with them. One day, a nurse came in and was talking to me about her sister, who also died of cancer. He...