30 Nov 2015

My occupational therapy capstone project is complete!

I wrote mine on “Increasing Awareness and Acceptance of Children with Disabilities Using Picture Books.” My Capstone Paper

I write about the importance of awareness and acceptance of children with disabilities, and how children’s picture books can serve as a form of disability awareness, which can promote acceptance, and therefore social inclusion…which ultimately leads to increased participation in occupation, which is the whole point of occupational therapy.

In addition, I talk about how OTs should consider incorporating picture books into their practice, and also how OTs should consider writing their own children’s books! It furthers the Centennial Vision, is a form of occupational justice, utilizes our unique talents, is in alignment with the Framework-III, and also has bonuses, on the business side of things. So far only four OTs that I know of have written five children’s book that have OT in them or even disabilities at all. Karen Jacobs, famous OT of the world, has written two of them. I want to be in the top ten. 🙂 Of course books about children with disabilities exist, but not enough of them, especially high quality ones.

Business wise, selling high-quality children’s books that exist already is a way to make a few extra dollars. And selling, giving away, or recommending them, especially if they are your own books, can be a value-added service, promoting satisfaction and loyalty. They are great for marketing. And if you write your own, especially if done as an e-book, you can make some money…well assuming it’s successful. Although to warn you, children’s books are hard to write well, and illustrations are quite costly.

To learn more about the process, read my capstone manuscript…the process etc is near the end, you can find via Table of Contents.

1DobynsKarenCapstonePaper

Use the Contact Me button on my website or email me…my name karendobyns, on gmail.com, if you want to say anything, because I just switched servers and the spam is out of control. I have over 2,000 comments and I won’t see yours…I have to get it fixed. Ugh.

Anyway….I got an A on my capstone YAY and after the presentation I give in 45 minutes through GoToMeeting (I think that’s the name), I am done with all but a single reflective post worth 1 point. 🙂 Post-professional clinical doctorate of occupational therapy (OTD), here I come!


9 Nov 2015

Cadillac OT versus Reality OT

A wonderful occupational therapist/educator wrote the following forum post on our OTD forum (we are getting our post-professional clinical doctorates in OT). I asked her permission to post it because it resonated. What we learn in OT school and what we discover in the real world are two different things – but we have to remember in the real world that what we learned in OT school is still a valid and burning flame within us we must nurture and allow to grow.

 

“I remember something that one of my professors once said: “What you get in OT school is the ‘Cadillac version of OT.”  I didn’t really understand it at the time, but the idea has stuck with me and I have certainly seen it in my own career.  A lot of what we learned in school is how it should be, but not necessarily how it is currently.  But we needed to learn it that way if there is any hope of changing things going forward.  Each of us are then charged with holding on to pieces of the “Cadillac version” that fit within our practice, working to change things in practice to fit more of that in, and adapting to what we cannot change.

I try to make my teaching fit that approach.  We emphasize occupation-based practice a lot in our curriculum, and we do teach preventative care and wellness, which aren’t necessarily reimbursed or even being practiced where our students complete their fieldwork.  But some of our students have been able to fit these things into the otherwise very limited medical model at their sites, and others have the desire to find practice settings in the future that will allow them to use these skills.” – J.D.