Recent movements on social media have made claims that occupational therapy as a profession is moving away from the medical model. However, occupational therapy has begun moving away from this model for a long time now. It is not something new. So as a healthcare profession, why did occupational therapy move away from the medical … Read more
One question that students commonly asked is if they can find their own fieldwork opportunities in occupational therapy school. The answer is it depends. There’s is a continuum of possible answer actually and this depends on the school that you attend. On one end of the spectrum, as shown by this response from ACOTE, some … Read more
Clinical Reasoning Definition Compared to other healthcare professions, PT and OT are more likely to use the phrase ‘clinical reasoning’. This is likely due to the explicit definitions for this term. There is also variability used to describe CR across the healthcare professions. Components of Clinical Reasoning Narrative Reasoning – the use of storytelling to … Read more
Definition of Grading The dictionary definition of gradation is the process of advancing something step by step; as in a gradual process. In occupational therapy, a reference of my old lecture notes defines gradation (Reed and Sanderson, 1990) as an intervention technique that categorizes tasks into degrees of difficulty or complexity. In the simplest of … Read more
By now, you should be familiar with what occupations are. But the question is why? What’s the big deal with it and why should we help clients to get back to doing their occupations? If you have seen my video on occupation as means versus ends video, you learned how occupation can be used both … Read more
Occupation What is the purpose or meaning of the activity? How does this activity relate to occupational performance? What occupation are you analyzing? An activity may belong to more than one category. [ ] Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) [ ] Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs) [ ] Rest and Sleep [ ] Productivity … Read more
What is Self-Care? The term self-care has been on the rise. On Google Trends, there was interest around 2004 which decreased. It has been on the rise again starting around 2018 and appears to be at peak interest on Google searches. This suggests that interest on self-care is on the rise. The top related term … Read more
You may have heard or read about occupational therapy moving towards a Doctorate’s degree for occupational therapists and a bachelor’s degree for occupational therapy assistants in 2027. I was under the impression that this was the case too. As this is a controversial issue, it seems that this is no longer the case. Upon further … Read more
In motor learning strategies, two terms that can be confusing are blocked practice and massed practice. Practice can be a very useful and empowering method to promote occupational performance and goals in occupational therapy. Blocked practice Both of these types of practice are types of motor learning strategies. Blocked practice can be thought of as the opposite of … Read more
What is Transfer of Learning? Occupational therapists promote learning using different strategies. One often used concept that clients learn is the transfer of learning. Transfer of learning concepts and its documentation is also used among the interdisciplinary team such as with speech-language pathologists and physical therapists. Transfer of learning is defined as the “generalization of … Read more