Happy Pride Month!! Is it me or are Fridays more relaxed than ever before? It feels like people embody the end of the week vibes and take it one task at a time as compared to Mondays where everyone is hyper-focused!
June is the unofficial month of Call for Papers! They are here for NYSOTA, here for AOTA, and here for AOTA Education Summit. Many conferences are opting for the hybrid option, which is really the best of both worlds! I hope you have a conference or two planned for 2021 and 2022!
This are the stories that has my week ending on a positive note.
Occupational Therapy
Smartphone App Measures Reintegration of Veterans With Traumatic Brain Injury, Georgia State Study Shows – Georgia State University News – College of Nursing and Health Professions, Press Releases, Research (gsu.edu) It is beyond exciting to develop and study the efficacy of an app tat looks at community re-integration of veterans post-TBI. An OT is the principal investigator of this study and works with a team of rehab specialists to determine the efficacy of the app. Spoiler alert: the app works! How well? The numbers are kind of mind boggling.
Healthy Lifestyle Tips | Holistic Occupational Therapy Community (holisticot.org)—Healthy Lifestyle Tips. Emmy Vadnais, OTR/L interviews thought leaders and health care practitioners about integrative health, wellness, prevention, spirituality, and consciousness. This page has everything holistic. Honestly, I get calm just looking at the names of the presenters and their approach to a more mindful way of life! There are various trainings and videos that can be implemented in practice and many of the presenters are occupational therapy professionals.
Mi Casa Pueblo helps Medicaid patients find affordable housing (chieftain.com) From occupational therapy assistant to helping Medicaid patients find affordable housing. Inspiring story of an occupational therapy assistant who was in financial trouble and ended up on public assistance. She used her personal experience to build a business that helps others. I am sure her training as an OTA went a long way in the human services piece.
Managing diabetes and an OT placement – OT Magazine (ot-magazine.co.uk) Managing diabetes and an OT placement. Managing diabetes under any circumstance is difficult, monitoring diet and blood sugar levels throughout the day. It certainly is more difficult as a fieldwork student trying to balance learning with monitoring the condition. One student shares the experience.
NH grandmother raising child born with neonatal abstinence syndrome (seacoastonline.com) This story is so touching and includes the integral role an occupational therapist played in helping a newborn baby born addicted to drugs flourish. Also included was speech and physical therapy, which really just pays homage to the rehab team.
Self-Regulation and Mindfulness: Live, Interactive, Online Training With Dr Varleisha Gibbs (sensoryintegrationeducation.com) Now more than ever self-regulation is needed with high levels of anxiety in our pediatric clients. Dr. Gibbs literally wrote the book on this topic and is now providing a live, interactive webinar!
Research
From @BrochaSternOTT Most Cited Journal of Hand Therapy Articles – Elsevier Hand therapy is definitely an area that is not for all therapists due to the complexity of injuries and the special skills needed to provide appropriate interventions and splinting. However, a good place to start is with research, and this is a list of the most cited journal of hand therapy articles.
Call for Papers: British Journal of Occupational Therapy Special Issue: Occupational Therapy in Higher Education Settings including supporting students with mental health, ASD, ADHD, and sensory difficulties. After reading The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays: Wang, Esmé Weijun, it is critical to support the mental health needs of students in university settings.
The Association between LGBTQIA+ Self-Identification and Factors Facilitating Homelessness: A Scoping Review of the Occupational Therapy Peer-Reviewed Literature: Occupational Therapy In Health Care: Vol 35, No 2 (tandfonline.com) Results found “the majority of this literature (n = 40) was exploratory studies through which researchers sought to better understand the unique needs of subgroups within the LGBTQIA+ community. Only three articles addressed the link between LGBTQIA+ self-identification and homelessness with no articles that addressed evaluation and intervention of the factors predisposing this population to homelessness.” As the need for occupational therapy in community settings grow, recognizing the populations that requires this support and what is needed is pivotal with carving out a role with each community.
OTJR (@OTJRJournal) is having a great Top 10 cited articles of 2019 series on Twitter and I am enjoying the stroll down research memory lane. The first article: Health Care Access for Adults With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: A Scoping Review points to the need for equality with health care access for adults with ID/DD. Along the same lines, this article: Evidence-Based Interventions for Increasing Work Participation for Persons With Various Disabilities: A Systematic Review looks at the improvement of representation of persons with disabilities in the work force. Other topics include driving, Autism, international research priorities, and executive function skills in children.
Potpourri
How Teachers Can Coach High School Students to Improve Executive Functioning Skills | Edutopia When it comes to supporting the executive functioning skills of teenagers, these are concrete strategies that will easily support development of this skill.
Online Academic Dishonesty | educational research techniques Online Academic Dishonesty. Building a better exam that is cheat-proof is no easy feat. There are some great strategies here that help maintain the fidelity of exams. Some are new to me!
Celebrating the Life of Eric Carle – PediaStaff It is always touching when there is a tribute to someone as special as Eric Carle, a writer of 30+ books that had that distinctive, bright, color scheme. I believe everyone has either read, seen, or heard of an Eric Carle book and that book has a special place in their heart.
Online Learning Resources in pandemic| Education and Training | International Journal of Research (IJR) Online learning resources in pandemic education and training. Even though we are moving away from online learning exclusively, there will still be elements of online learning that will supplement face-to-face learning because we have just learned to reimagine teaching! These are some resources that are new to me, and I am sure will be new to many instructors.
LGBTQ Children’s Books | Transgender Kids Books | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com) Great reads for this month and beyond.
Combination of early reading programs helps with kindergarten readiness — ScienceDaily A new study shows the combination of two early reading programs had positive effects on preschool students entering kindergarten. One main component of both programs studied is the importance of parental support.
OT Research Corner 