At the beginning of your journey into occupational therapy, it can be challenging to quantify the levels of assistance your patient is requiring within their activities of daily living (ADLs). You might be able to provide a wordy explanation about how much assistance your patient needed from you while putting on his pants, but how […]
Documentation can be a pretty intimidating class in OT school. But the reality of writing an occupational therapy SOAP note, and other documentation, in the clinic is actually a lot simpler than it sounds. The main goal of any kind of documentation is to keep a record of the patient’s progress toward their goals and […]
Goal writing in occupational therapy can be tough. Goal writing correctly and effectively can be even tougher. This is especially true when you’re an OT student or new grad occupational therapist. This article will help simplify the goal writing process for the adult and older adult settings, such as inpatient rehab, subacute rehab, home health, […]
The medical field is well-known for its lingo. It’s often said that chart notes look something like alphabet soup, even to those who are familiar with such terminology. It can make things even more difficult when occupational therapy medical abbreviations (and medical abbreviations in general!) enter the mix. We learn a whole laundry list of […]
As a new occupational therapist or OT student, documentation can be difficult to get the hang of. It can seem so overwhelming thinking of all the interventions, observations, inferences, and more that occur during each and every minute of a patient session. For this reason, a lot of students (and even practicing therapists!) overthink documentation […]
This post was originally published on March 3, 2016 and updated on June 14, 2019. When I originally wrote this post on productivity way back as a new grad in 2016, I thought that being a productive occupational therapist was one of the top things that made me a “good” OT. I now know just […]