30 Jun 2013

22 Jun 2013

OTs never stop learning

When meeting a fellow very passionate OT for lunch (Patti, LOVE HER) at a sushi place, we end up sharing ideas. In this case, a concept borrowed from S’Cool Moves. We used chopsticks as our tapping sticks and stuck the post-it to the soy sauce to use as a vertical surface, the music playing in the restaurant was our beat, etc. She had me practice it. It was surprisingly hard. It’s got so many great benefits (the quadrant tapping) in regards to rhythm, bilateral coordination, rapid naming for sight words, etc. I’ll hopefully explain more later as she also helped re-spark my OT mojo so I have like ten things I want to talk about.

For now, rest. 🙂 
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

21 Jun 2013

Best OT quote ever

“Sometimes I wish I could do more for my friends, then I realize how helpful I will be when we start getting our hips replaced!!” – Brooke, former OT classmate

 

 

Category: laughs, Occupational Therapy | Comments: 1

21 Jun 2013

Hula hooping is my new obsession….

I am LOVING hula hooping. Not with those cheap kid ones from CVS that nobody can do, but nicer ones. I will have to post some video soon. I keep thinking of all the ways I could use them with my kids. Also, I started doing some baton tricks today just for manual dexterity improvement, and mostly because I was hoping if I could figure out the baton I could figure out how to use it with the hula hoop. 

I have a few elementary school girls, like in 4th grade, who I think would love the baton and/or hula hooping as little warm ups or breaks during our OT sessions. You know, mix fun with torture… 😉  I must remember that next school year. Yay for school occupational therapists 🙂 
Oh, and I plan to do some shadowing and extra volunteering in the NICU (neonatal ICU) this summer. I love the NICU and already volunteer there as a baby cuddler once a week on weekends, but I’ll try to do more in weekdays so I can observe the OTs! I don’t plan to leave my school OT job, but just love NICU OT and want to learn more. 🙂
Hope everyone is having a nice start to their summer!
Karen 
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

14 Jun 2013

advocate as costume!

This is hardcore. One of my friends (a lawyer who would like to go into educational law) had her child dress up as an advocate for I think Halloween, or some other costumed event.  I know those of us who work with advocates would think that was super awesome! LOL! It wasn’t advocating for school services but even so. What a cool idea. 🙂 She gave me permission to post this picture because I laughed over it and wanted to share! What a cute kid. 

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 2

14 Jun 2013

blast from 2006?

I stumbled across this from my first semester of OT school…..blast from the past, man

I’ve gotten more used to the cadaver lab – I’m still not thrilled with it and it really makes my back ache but I’ve gotten more confident in my ability to not ruin anything, and more used to the smell. This past week we cut open the rib cage and took out the heart. During the embalming process some of the blood gets congealed and stuck. There were huge, revolting “sticks” of blood stuck in the holes of the heart. Yuck. Plus our guy’s heart was covered in like a brown gravy. One table had a HUGE heart, it looked like it had barnacles on it and had been underwater for years!

I stay very busy. This upcoming week is going to be a nightmare. We had a delayed start on Thursday and a full snow day on Friday, but we can’t absorb the loss. Somehow they have to figure out a way to add in 10 hours of class to our already completely booked schedule over the next few months. This week., we have our first officer meeting, our first class meeting, and our first faculty meeting. Plus two anatomy quizzes, tons of reading for other classes, AND WORST OF ALL, I have two group presentations and two papers both due on Thursday. One is a developmental profile on the age segment 10 months to 12 months, a presentation and handout, due with one other girl. The other is an activity analysis and craft project with four other students. We are doing “Mexican Metal Tooling” and it involves a Powerpoint, a presentation, and then teaching the class the craft and doing it. Oh yeah, and the huge activity analysis paper where we look at task analysis, task adaptation, performance areas it works on, etc, all guided by the ubiquitous Practice Framework. We have the entire two hours ourselves. Scary, huh.

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 3

9 Jun 2013

Sorry for such a long hiatus

Things have not been great here, so I haven’t had the energy to post in a long time. I presented at conference and that’s kind of the last of my OT passion I have had for a while, but I do know I fundamentally love my profession and just need to find that inner sparkle again. I blogged for six years straight so I guess a little break from blogging isn’t the end of the world. Summer starts soon so that will be a good time to try to focus on the blog again, and get my children’s book illustrated so I can publish! One thing I recently learned about that I had never thought about is using a LABELMAKER for kids who struggle with handwriting. A friend told me she has a child with tremors, and she has him use a labelmaker when he has to label a worksheet. He thinks its super fun and then he gets to participate in the activity with less stress.

Have any of you tried that? What did you think? I thought this was brilliant and was ashamed I hadn’t thought of it earlier, as I’m guessing other OTs have been smart enough to try it! 
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 5