Occupational Therapy
2
Aug
2012
OT was featured on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
So this post, is, oh, a little late, but it was still a neat article to read! A great guy who had a spinal cord injury was chosen for the episode, and his OT/PT/Rehab were factored heavily into the episode, which is awesome!
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none
2
Aug
2012
Accessibility and swimming
Another thought-provoking post by a wonderful guest blogger 🙂
Having been born with a disability, spina bifida, and requiring crutches to ambulate, I have always found exercise to be a major challenge. This is particularly true for those of us who live in climates where it snows for half the year as it does here in Canada. Time and again, rehab professionals have recommended swimming as a work out that is particularly suited for people with disabilities. And yet significant challenges remain as I was recently reminded.
I travelled with an able-bodied friend (I will call her Jane for the purposes of this blog to preserve anonymity) to attend a wedding and they had a swimming pool and whirlpool at the hotel. Unfortunately, I forgot my swimming trunks and decided I would simply accompany my friend while she swam. However, as soon as I entered the pool area, I found it extremely treacherous because of the slippery surface throughout the pool area. Crutches would not gain any traction as on ice. Although there was a lifeguard on duty, she simply ignored us. Eventually, Jane was able to move a pool chair to the edge of the whirlpool and she helped me remove my leg brace and shoes so that I could dip my feet in the whirlpool. Having never used a whirlpool before, it was one of the best experiences of my life. However, had I not had Jane with me, the extremely slippery surface would have made it all but impossible for me to participate. As it was, I fell down on the way out but luckily did not break any bones.
Unfortunately, this is a structural problem not confined to one pool. When I took swimming lessons a few years back, the pool change rooms were equally hazardous. Those of us who do not have access to wheelchairs, which I am hardly in a position to buy for one activity, face the dismal choice of not participating, risking injury or crawling (which many find demeaning). None of these choices is very appealing. With an array of OT programs in North America and the technology to send people to the moon, I would hope that an OT discovers a way to allow crutch users to participate more easily and independently in the fun world of swimming.
Ravi Malhotra is Associate Professor of the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section, University of Ottawa and may be reached at ravi.malhotra@uottawa.ca
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 1
1
Aug
2012
What's in YOUR OT toolbox?
I found this as a draft from 2007?!!!! I do have a pediatric OT toolbox video on Youtube that’s super old. I have a newer one I posted on this blog that I guess I should post on Youtube, although I think I’m ready to do an updated one again!
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So…I made a video based on what I keep in a little box for when I am a real occupational therapist and not just a student…but I know there is lots I haven’t thought of. So my question to you all is….what is in YOUR OT toolbox? Via text or pictures or video, let me know…I’ll post it. I’d LOVE to get more ideas.
One day I’ll actually get good at setting up videos, but for now, y’all gotta bear with my learning curve.
Here was the stuff I talked about, if I remember correctly, in no particular order:
1. Duct tape
2. Nylon cable ties
3. Jumbo playing cards
4. A laundry detergent cap
5. Non-skid liner, often called dycem
6. rubber bands
7. Play money
8. Dollar store occupation-based ideas – like a map puzzle for people who like to travel to use to talk about, or sort, or do…or whatever.
Oh no I’m blanking on what else! Guess you gotta watch the video to find out the rest. LET ME KNOW WHAT IS IN YOUR TOOLBOX! What can you not live without?
I already know my friend Burt is “cogitating” on a mini video to do on basic REAL tools he thinks all OTs should carry around…he is my tool hero. And his 17-year old daughter, Sarah, is my textbook hero because I show her diagrams out of my books (like Trombley, Pendretti, Willard & Spackman…) and make her teach me things. For example, we learned in an adaptive activities of daily life lab the other day some one-handed dressing techniques for button-down shirts, but then I was confused by the diagrams in the book and it would have taken me a while to figure it out, and so I showed them to her and she taught me in about 2 seconds because her brain likes diagrams and mine doesn’t. I’ve already decided she should follow me around for the rest of my life helping me with environmental modifications and anything else requiring a physics/math/3-D artistic brain. I know my strengths and weaknesses…I don’t plan to work in a setting that requires a lot of those things!
Ok I’m gonna go check my laundry now and convince myself it’s going to be okay. I have a serious phobia about washing machines and dryers. I’m always convinced they are either going to flood or blow up. I’m serious. I have no issue with flying across the country by myself, walking up to strangers to ask a question, dealing with insurance, or being in a mildly scary part of town…all the stuff that scares a lot of people….but get me near a blender, a microwave, a washing machine/dryer, or any other machine that plugs in and makes noise, and I am SCARED!
Okay,I totally wasted way too long going off on multiple tangents. Probably procrastination from having to go face the scary laundry. Dum dum DUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none
30
Jul
2012
White noise apps to help inattentive children focus on schoolwork
http://www.behavioralandbrainfunctions.com/content/6/1/55
The effects of background white noise on memory performance in inattentive school children
This is a Swedish journal article (in English) about how white noise can potentially be of help with inattentive school children. There are a lot of cheap white noise apps you can buy and some I think are even free. However, the white noise actually worsened attention for children who are typically attentive. It goes into some of the neuroscience involved with why kids with ADHD would be helped by it, and it wasn’t just because it masked other noises. Interesting article, I recommend at least skimming it. It does also say there are individual differences though, so this is NOT saying immediately play white noise for all kids with ADHD. I do like the idea, however, of trying white noise apps with headphones on for SOME kids while doing independent work…
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none
29
Jul
2012
OT blogging mid-life crisis
I’m working on weaning off my basic sleep medication (my entire life, sleeping has been an issue) so that means I’m awake. Actually, it’s only 1030pm on a Saturday so that’s not crazy. But my best friend is spending the night (yes, we’re 29, but she lives in Tijuana across the border so this is easier!) and she went to bed an hour ago. So I feel like I’m up late!
I’ve been seeing and learning about quite a few high-quality new blogs in the OT blogosphere that I think I’ve recently mentioned or linked to, and I just finished reading a bunch of Katie Riley’s blog posts about PR/Media. And I have a case of jealousy. I love my blog and I love writing, but I’m just such a rambler. Why write something in three words when I can write three hundred? AHAHAHAHA. I like typing out my thoughts, I like typing, and I don’t like editing. I typically write a post quickly, then post it, and don’t re-read it or try to make it shorter. I actually enjoy reading long posts so I don’t think twice about it. Most of the time.
But then a night like tonight, after reading about talking in “sound bytes” to recorders, and being succinct, etc, I feel kind of lost and sad and stupid (and I keep hearing what sound like gun shots??!! so if this is the last post you ever see, I totally died. Hopefully not!!!! Maybe my blog will become posthumously popular though….I wonder if i can access statcounter.com from Heaven???) Just kidding. On most of it. Except the sounds, I do hear those. Moving on, did I mention succinctness is an issue, I doubt all my work on this blog, and the point, and feel like I should just start writing short little things, and that most of my blog is worthless. The problem is, not counting my summer breaks from my OT school job, I don’t have much time I can give this blog, except as a therapeutic reflection tool or to keep things going. I don’t have the interest or time to make this the professional blog that gets me 40,000+ hits a month and is media-friendly…it’s not my personality. I wish it was.
I know I have some long-term readers here (ie 5 years, wow), and you probably recognize I go through a mini mid-life blogging crisis every once in a while. This is one of those times where I go out and buy my blog a new convertible and a gym membership. I need to figure out how I want to approach the future. Shorter posts? Less rambly posts? Keeping rambly posts but making it so where have to click a link to read it if it’s gonna be more than a paragraph? Less diversity? More diversity? More professionalism? I don’t know. The point of this blog, ultimately, is to both provide as a therapeutic outlet for me AND hopefully be at times helpful to others, but how to make those two more supplementary to each other,….I repeat. I don’t know. I don’t know. I love redundancy too, anybody notice that I like repeating myself??? 😉 😉 Ahh, I crack me up.
So. Here’s the deal. I do plan to try and add labels to future posts, and slowly start going back and adding labels to older posts (I have over 1,600 so that’s not easy), but it was a recent suggestion and a good one. I think the main reason I haven’t been good about labels is that I usually blog via my e-mail, so I don’t have label access then. I’ll try to write future posts that have more singular topics and don’t go all over the place. And while I will, pessimistically, probably not succeed, as my glass is not only half-empty but cracked and ugly, I will try to think more…focusedly (apparently that’s not a word but let’s go with it, shall we?) AUGH MORE NOISES anyway, more focusedly, with my future posts as I rethink what this blog does for me and what it does for the OT community, if anything!
That would have been a good ending, right there. But we’ve established I don’t do things correctly. So I want to say one last thing, that I’m also pondering on what I would like to write for another article. I know I still want to write about OT in a third-world country based on my shadowing in Bogota, Colombia, for an OT magazine. But I would also like to MORE NOISES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! write some things for some mainstream publications….like Anne Zachry (sp?) is doing over in Memphis. She rocks.
Finally, Jan Olsen of Handwriting without Tears was mentioned in this month’s Costco Connection, which just came and I would have eventually read and discovered myself, but my mom saw it first and let me know. 🙂
There. Now let’s stop at this awkward junction, shall we???
Happy Olympics 🙂
PS1: Watching the Olympics tonight, I was thinking that the 37 year old Australian sand volleyball player was lucky to still have full uses of her shoulders and if she has had rotator cuff issues in the past….these are the things OTs think about.
PS2: I’ll admit it, I shamelessly am begging for comments telling me what you do and do not want to see, what you do and do not like, etc…
PS3: Even on my most doubt-filled days of my own professional worth, I never doubt for a second that the IDEALS of occupational therapy – OT at its best – are absolutely phenomenal.
PS4: I have scheduled a lost of posts for the future so who knows what’s coming in the days to come.
PS5: I have several product review blog posts coming up – on Dycem, PenAgain, Classroom Solutions Foot Fidgets, in the weeks to come.
PS6: Remember what I said about rambling???? 😡
PS7: So I sent this via e-mail and it normally posts immediately but something was weird so I am re-posting via blogger, so maybe you will see this twice. Guess we will find out.
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 5
29
Jul
2012
My blogging mid-life crisis
I'm working on weaning off my basic sleep medication (my entire life, sleeping has been an issue) so that means I'm awake. Actually, it's only 1030pm on a Saturday so that's not crazy. But my best friend is spending the night (yes, we're 29, but she lives in Tijuana across the border so this is easier!) and she went to bed an hour ago. So I feel like I'm up late!
I've been seeing and learning about quite a few high-quality new blogs in the OT blogosphere that I think I've recently mentioned or linked to, and I just finished reading a bunch of Katie Riley's blog posts about PR/Media. And I have a case of jealousy. I love my blog and I love writing, but I'm just such a rambler. Why write something in three words when I can write three hundred? AHAHAHAHA. I like typing out my thoughts, I like typing, and I don't like editing. I typically write a post quickly, then post it, and don't re-read it or try to make it shorter. I actually enjoy reading long posts so I don't think twice about it. Most of the time.
But then a night like tonight, after reading about talking in “sound bytes” to recorders, and being succinct, etc, I feel kind of lost and sad and stupid (and I keep hearing what sound like gun shots??!! so if this is the last post you ever see, I totally died. Hopefully not!!!! Maybe my blog will become posthumously popular though….I wonder if i can access statcounter.com from Heaven???) Just kidding. On most of it. Except the sounds, I do hear those. Moving on, did I mention succinctness is an issue, I doubt all my work on this blog, and the point, and feel like I should just start writing short little things, and that most of my blog is worthless. The problem is, not counting my summer breaks from my OT school job, I don't have much time I can give this blog, except as a therapeutic reflection tool or to keep things going. I don't have the interest or time to make this the professional blog that gets me 40,000+ hits a month and is media-friendly…it's not my personality. I wish it was.
I know I have some long-term readers here (ie 5 years, wow), and you probably recognize I go through a mini mid-life blogging crisis every once in a while. This is one of those times where I go out and buy my blog a new convertible and a gym membership. I need to figure out how I want to approach the future. Shorter posts? Less rambly posts? Keeping rambly posts but making it so where have to click a link to read it if it's gonna be more than a paragraph? Less diversity? More diversity? More professionalism? I don't know. The point of this blog, ultimately, is to both provide as a therapeutic outlet for me AND hopefully be at times helpful to others, but how to make those two more supplementary to each other,….I repeat. I don't know. I don't know. I love redundancy too, anybody notice that I like repeating myself??? 😉 😉 Ahh, I crack me up.
So. Here's the deal. I do plan to try and add labels to future posts, and slowly start going back and adding labels to older posts (I have over 1,600 so that's not easy), but it was a recent suggestion and a good one. I think the main reason I haven't been good about labels is that I usually blog via my e-mail, so I don't have label access then. I'll try to write future posts that have more singular topics and don't go all over the place. And while I will, pessimistically, probably not succeed, as my glass is not only half-empty but cracked and ugly, I will try to think more…focusedly (apparently that's not a word but let's go with it, shall we?) AUGH MORE NOISES anyway, more focusedly, with my future posts as I rethink what this blog does for me and what it does for the OT community, if anything!
That would have been a good ending, right there. But we've established I don't do things correctly. So I want to say one last thing, that I'm also pondering on what I would like to write for another article. I know I still want to write about OT in a third-world country based on my shadowing in Bogota, Colombia, for an OT magazine. But I would also like to MORE NOISES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! write some things for some mainstream publications….like Anne Zachry (sp?) is doing over in Memphis. She rocks.
Finally, Jan Olsen of Handwriting without Tears was mentioned in this month's Costco Connection, which just came and I would have eventually read and discovered myself, but my mom saw it first and let me know. 🙂
There. Now let's stop at this awkward junction, shall we???
Happy Olympics 🙂
PS1: Watching the Olympics tonight, I was thinking that the 37 year old Australian sand volleyball player was lucky to still have full uses of her shoulders and if she has had rotator cuff issues in the past….these are the things OTs think about.
PS2: I'll admit it, I shamelessly am begging for comments telling me what you do and do not want to see, what you do and do not like, etc…
PS3: Even on my most doubt-filled days of my own professional worth, I never doubt for a second that the IDEALS of occupational therapy – OT at its best – are absolutely phenomenal.
PS4: I have scheduled a lost of posts for the future so who knows what's coming in the days to come.
PS5: I have several product review blog posts coming up – on Dycem, PenAgain, Classroom Solutions Foot Fidgets, in the weeks to come.
PS6: Remember what I said about rambling???? 😡
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none
26
Jul
2012
Patient perspective, ADVANCE series
I enjoyed reading all four parts of this ADVANCE patient perspective series about a woman who had a spinal cord injury. I think more and more online sites are trying to get patient perspective which I love, I think that is the most interesting part of all.
Click that link to see all four parts of her journey, from getting sick to recovery.
25
Jul
2012
Public school could use a little Waldorf infusion ;)
I work in public schools, but I have to say I like the philosophy of the Waldorf schools. I agree little ones don’t need to be learning so much from screens and really would do better with more movement-based activities incorporated into their learning. Of course technology has its place, but overall, I can’t imagine any OT who doesn’t agree with the idea that children need more movement and creativity built into their school day. Too bad that’s so hard now but some teachers get creative in public school with how to make that happen! 🙂
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 3
24
Jul
2012
Infographic on video games improving our health!
Ethan wrote me a lovely e-mail a while ago and we corresponded briefly. He showed me this awesome infographic but I don’t have nearly the technical knowledge I need to know how to host it myself, so he wrote this up for me. I recommend checking out the infographic that he describes below, it’s quite nicely done! And while I’m not a fan of LOTS of screen time, in small doses, it’s awesome. 🙂 I know a lot of OT rehab clients at my first job loved working with the Wii, and the Kinect is even cooler these days. Anybody see Erik of OT Army Fame, in the tech session at AOTA conference, playing Star Wars? Soo funny. He uses it a lot with his veterans.
Often times we think of video gaming as something sedentary (sitting on the couch comes to mind), but several consoles have started reshaping the way we view video games — namely Nintendo’s Wii and Xbox Kinect. These video game consoles have more than just fun applications with your friends on a Friday night. Now, health professionals are finding new ways of using these devices to help people with illnesses and general health. Check out this infographic from Big Fish Games that talks a little bit more about how video games are improving our health.
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none
24
Jul
2012
Pre-Handwriting
I have deja vu, I think I’ve posted this before, but now I have a new system so it won’t happen again of re-posting pictures I find in Picasa. Anyway, great pre-writing skill. Take your little ones to the beach and practice vertical and horizontal lines!! 🙂
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none