One of things I love most about being an occupational therapist is the huge diversity in our scope of practice. Bridging the gap between physical therapy and speech pathology, we truly get the best of both worlds and are able to dip our hands into orthopedic conditions as well as cognitive impairments (via neuro rehab). […]
When working with patients affected by acquired or traumatic brain injuries for the first time, it can be challenging, exciting, and even stressful as an OT student or new occupational therapy practitioner. This is especially true if you have not been exposed to such a patient or any cognitive interventions for traumatic brain injury. The […]
I quickly learned in graduate school (in my physiology and neuroscience courses) that I learn best with flow charts – when I can form a plan and visualize what steps come next. The same is true for me now when treating a patient in my hand therapy setting. Regardless of how simple or complicated the […]
We’re so excited to feature holistic OT Linda Schiano Moriello, OTR/L, for this guest post all about holistic occupational therapy. We love that holistic practices are becoming more mainstream and accepted in OT and look forward to sharing how you can incorporate holistic OT approaches in your day to day practice. Occupational therapists are skilled […]
Occupation-based interventions: It may seem like common sense to use these as occupational therapists. After all, our title has the word “occupation” in it, for goodness sake! Unfortunately, assembly-line therapy has reduced the use of occupation-based treatments in favor of exercises that make point of service and high productivity the main objective versus providing quality, […]
Whether you work as an occupational therapist or COTA in home health, outpatient, acute care, rehab, or in a long term care facility, you will certainly encounter patients with a dementia diagnosis or co-morbidity. If you work primarily with older adults, this might even be a large percentage of your patients. In this article, I […]
The following article on Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy (along with Modified Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy) was guest-authored by Janet Meydam, OTR/L and Meredith Chandler, OTR/L. We want to give both of them a huge thanks for sharing their insight and research for this article. According to the National Stroke Association, it is estimated that 9 out of […]
If you’ve already found your passion for all things vision in OT, it’s time to take a closer look at how you can incorporate vision into your practice. The next step will be to develop your skills assessing patients so you can feel more confident treating within the Occupational Therapy practice act and in turn […]
My interest in all things “vision” in the occupational therapy world has been stewing for several years. Working as an occupational therapist in inpatient rehab, I became interested in perceptual skills but did not dive into furthering my education or competency because I was more concerned with continuing education courses designed for stroke recovery, neuro-shoulder […]
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 […]