Joe's OT blog

Just the other day in our older adults course, we had a guest lecturer about the value of nutrition in individual's lives. She did a great job conveying her message on the importance of people receiving proper nutrition and ensuring that they are not malnourished. Malnourishment has been a problem for many years in the hospital setting and continues to be increasingly prevalent issue. Our guest speaker stressed the importance of educating our clients on ways to avoid malnourishment and increase well-being. The purpose of this blog post is to discuss two interventions that we as future occupational therapists can do to help our clients increase their quality of life.  As our guest lecturer mentioned there are basically two main ways we can help someone who is not getting proper nutrition. These are exercise and eating protein. To give two main examples I want to first think about an older adult population. This would be a perfect population to have group therapy. The group therapy...

As we start to wind down the end of coursework in my career as an OT student, we were tasked with drawing a glyph self-portrait of a leader.  In drawing the glyph different features represent different characteristics of a leader This is something we did at the very beginning of our schooling as well. When we were finished we were asked to compare and contrast the one we drew just the other day to the one we drew in the first few weeks of school. So here we go: To begin, my characters were relatively similar and almost identical. Both have square heads meaning leadership stems from nurture over nature. I firmly believe that over time we can learn to be a leader just because we mature, we gain skills, and we have the ability to observe and model our actions after other effective leaders. Both have small eyes meaning there is an equal mix of leaders and non-leaders in the field of OT. After reflecting I wish I could go back and change the small eyes to big eyes meaning the majorit...

A couple of weeks ago, as part of our neurological aspects class, we had the opportunity to go watch the Memphis Rolling Grizzlies practice. The Memphis Rolling Grizzlies are part of the National Wheelchair Basketball Association and are made up of players with various injuries that don't allow them to run or jump anymore. Injuries may range from hip replacements to amputations to spinal cord injuries. The Rolling Grizzlies play in division one of the NWBA, the highest division competing at the highest level. I am very grateful that I was able to go watch them, it was a great learning experience for myself and classmates. I have always enjoyed playing basketball and like to think that I am somewhat decent at it. My friends might say otherwise but that is a conversation for another day. Just being around basketball for a lot of my life it was interesting how similar and different it was. I thought it was interesting that they use a functional classification scale assigning players...

In our Neurological Aspects class we just finished up our media project. We were each assigned a recyclable material to be used to create a device to be used in an intervention. We were then assigned a client and given their case and details about their diagnoses. For my project I was assigned aluminum foil. My client was recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The progression of her diagnoses has recently caused her to have some problems. She has suffered some falls recently, seen a decrease in her upper extremity range of motion, sensation to touch in her hands have decreased and she reports a numb feeling in her hands at some points throughout the day. She is struggling to do the things she loves. Due to the progression of multiples sclerosis, Alice's doctor has written an order for home health services. As I read the case, the wheels in my head started spinning with ideas. I eventually decided to make what I called the HookNet. It is a device made of aluminum foil in the ...

Matt Olson, a 20 year old young man, suffered a severe spinal cord injury while playing hockey in Chicago. He was moving full speed and lost his balance going head first into the boards. Matt says he remembers laying there trying to move but he just couldn't do it. He had suffered a severe spinal cord injury. He suffered broken bones in the neck and his spinal cord was pinched at the C4 level, unfortunately leaving him paralyzed below the shoulders with some feeling in his biceps and forearms. He underwent surgery and spent several weeks in a Chicago hospital where he regained the ability to talk and eat. The doctors expect that Matt will regain some movement in his shoulders but that is about it. Matt's story is one that is tough to hear. He is a young 20 year old kid who just wants to enjoy life. Its awesome to hear him say his injury isn't going to stop him from living life. He is gonna be the same kid, with a good personality who cracks some good jokes every now and t...

I just finished reading the New York Times Bestseller  Inside the O' Briens  by Lisa Genova. This book takes us inside the lives of Joe O' Brien, his wife Rosie, and his four kids (JJ, Meghan, Katie, and Patrick). Joe has just been diagnosed with Huntington's disease. The book highlights the devastating emotional effects the disease causes. One thing I think the book did a great job of was showing us how much the diagnoses affected those around Joe, really going into depth about how the possibility of getting the disease affected each one of his kids. The book was very deep and so sad at some parts it was hard to read, but unfortunately that is the ultimate reality of what this terrible disease does. As we have been learning about Huntington's disease in class,  Inside the O' Briens  really deepened my understanding of what it is, what the symptoms and prognosis are and how important a good social support system is. As part of class we did an occupational profile ...