Occupational Therapy - A Blog about OT

This task was relatively simple.  I signed up for CoComment, a service that allows you to track the comments you’ve made on other blogs, as well as the replies to your comments on those other blogs.  I’m sure this will come in handy for future challenges

Many of us can get into the habit of commenting at the same blogs. But part of extending the conversation is bringing new people into it. Today’s task is simple. Leave a comment on a blog where you’ve never commented before. If you’re feeling particularly ambitious, do this at a few blogs. You may want to blog about the experience on your own blog. If you do, be sure to tag it with “comment08″

Looking at my site stats, I found a blog linking to my own that I had never seen.  It was cleverly named, “Oh Tea” and is a brand new blog written by an occupational therapy (OT) student.  She had found my blog and was kind enough to link to me. I’ll post over there to welcome her to the blogging world

In an effort to increase my blogging skills and learn more about enhancing my blog and networking with other blogs, I have decided to join the 31 Day Comment Challenge.  Since I’m starting this on May 5th, I’m obviously five days late, so I have some catching up to do.

Day 1 Challenge:

Answer the following questions:

• How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?
  • Unfortunately, I don’t comment on other blogs very often.  If I had to give it a number, I’d say I make less than one comment a week on other blogs.
• Do you track your blog comments? How? What do you do with your tracking?
  • WordPress does let me track my comments, but if I have multiple comments, it can difficult.  If there is a comment that needs attending to, I’ll save the email that notified me of the comment in my inbox, and I won’t delete it until I’ve addressed the comment.  Currently, I have about 7 comments that need to be addressed.
• Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week?
  • I do tend to comment on the same blogs.  Occasionally, when I find a new blog that looks interesting, I’ll comment on a new blog.
• Now review Gina Trapani’s Guide to Blog Comments and ask yourself how well you’re doing in each of the different areas. Are there any specific areas where you think you need to do some work? What do you want to do to address these issues?
  • I’ve been on the Internet long enough to have witnessed every single behavior listed on that website, and I’ve been annoyed by it enough to know proper netiquette.

I’d like to update the blogroll that appears on the right side of the blog page. So here’s your chance to plug your website or blog, and if it is OT related, I’ll add it in!

As part of occupational therapy month, here’s a new occupational therapy video I found on YouTube that really shows what it is we do with real life examples:

This year, I joined the OT Month Committee at my hospital to see what kind of ideas we could come up with to spread the word about OT. In past years, we had a booth set up near the cafeteria, but few people stopped to look at what was being presented at the booth. Since we wanted to reach out to a larger group of people, we decided to send out an all-user email.

In the email, we talked about how April is occupational therapy month and we had a link to an online quiz inviting people to test their knowledge about occupational therapy. Additionally, we offered a $20 giftcard as an incentive for people to take the quiz.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that a total of 67 people had successfully completed the quiz! There were plenty of wrong answers, but the fact that people took the time to try the quiz shows that we helped spread the word. As an added fun tidbit, one of the questions we asked was for people to name an occupational therapist that they knew. Many people left that last question blank, but it was interesting to see which therapists got mentioned.

Here are the questions from the quiz: (more…)

In a few weeks, I’ll be getting my first student, guiding her through her Level I fieldwork.  I like to help others (isn’t that why I became an OT?), and I think that assisting other students going through school is a great way of helping them.  I’m looking forward to the experience and was also looking for guidance.

If you have had students or you are a student yourself, what kind of things are you looking for in your Level I experience?  What worked for you and what didn’t work for you?  What kind of supervision did you enjoy?  Let me know!

I have previously blogged specifically about sternal and hip precautions but only briefly mentioned spinal precautions.  Every day, I get visitors to this blog looking for information regarding spinal precautions, so here they are:

• No Bending
• No Lifting
• No Twisting

The precautions, also known as BLT’s (for Bending, Lifting, Twisting) are usually in effect from anywhere between two and three months.

The bending will depend on where in the spine the surgery took place.  If it was in the cervical spine, don’t bend your neck.  If it was in your back, don’t bend your back.

One should not lift anything more than 5-10 lbs. after a spinal surgery.  A gallon of milk is about 8 pounds (or 8.35 according to a patient of mine who was a firefighter), and is usually a good reference point as to the maximum you can lift.

Twisting is pretty straightforward.  Don’t twist your back (or neck).  The two areas people have trouble with this is when sitting down, one tends to twist and look to see where they are about to sit; and when wiping themselves after a bowel movement.  Be careful!

These precautions apply to most spinal procedures, whether it is just a spinal cord stimulator placement, a laminectomy, ACDF, ALIF, etc.

I have been struggling with an ethical dilemma ever since my Level I fieldwork assignment, where I was doing my clinical at an outpatient facility within a hospital located near one of the local jails.

Since this hospital was affiliated with the city, we often got the prisoners that needed occupational therapy at this facility.  If a prisoner is scheduled to come in for an appointment, they are accompanied by two police officers and their hands and feet are both shackled.

As part of our assessments, we typically ask our patients what their own goals are for therapy.   Unfortunately, I had one patient (who had had an ulnar nerve and tendon injury from a knife fight) tell me that his goal for therapy was “to be able to close my hand into a fist so that I can fight again.”

When I hear something like that, I think to myself, “Why do I want to treat this person?  Why do I want to help this person meet his goals?”

This question bothered my enough that I knew right away that I would never want to work with forensic patients.  As an occupational therapist, I know that we have to work with patients to meet their goals and increase their occupational well-being.  But if that involves beating up other people and doing illegal things, how can I, in good faith, treat this type of patient?

Here’s a list of some of the splints I have either fabricated myself or got assistance in fabricating:

• Several below knee amputation splints
• Resting hand splints (actually, these are pre-fabricated)
• Humeral fracture brace (two pieces; protects the humerus from getting bumped by others; limits some shoulder range of motion if the doctor chooses)
• Several posterior gutter splints (usually for protection of an elbow status post ORIF; often, the splint starts along the forearm and extends down to the carpals)
• Yesterday, I helped with two splints (both on the same person, one for each hand): Ulnar gutter splint that involved providing slight MCP flexion for the 4th and 5th digits; and a resting hand splint that only provided ‘rest’ for the index finger through the MCP, but allowed for free range of motion of the PIP and DIP, and the rest of the fingers.

Sometimes the orders can be very complicated and specific, such as the ones highlighted in the last bullet above.  But I really enjoy making the splints, and am more and more strongly considering to specialize in splinting.