A Voice in the OT Wilderness

Saturday night’s alright for fightin’

OTCM — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:10:00 GMT

Back in August, I blogged about my mother and her attitudes about death. Recently, we had the opportunity – if you can call it that – to examine the subtleties of her perspective, and how it is reflected in her advanced directive. Mom was taken to the...(read more)

Phoenix Rising

OTCM — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:44:00 GMT

"What strategies are occupational therapists interested in mental health going to develop to both assert the field as an effective treatment and practice it as such?" This question was posed by an OT student in her comments on my assertion that advocacy...(read more)

Got Wings?

OTCM — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:23:00 GMT

This blog is ostensibly about emerging OT practices, of which case management is but one example. But there are also existing OT practices that can become "re-emergent" if more OT practitioners consider them in the context of new information. In the U.S.,...(read more)

Still Impressionable

OTCM — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:50:00 GMT

What experiences in your career have awakened you to beliefs you didn't know you had, and/or made you change your mind about any of them? For me, it took providing disability case management (DCM) services to injured workers to find out how elitist I...(read more)

Po-tay-toe, Po-tah-toe...Tuber

OTCM — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:36:00 GMT

What strategies do you use to remind yourself to use person-centered language in your professional communication? I still see the word "patient" used a lot in the health care literature, even though the concept of "person-centered service" is becoming...(read more)

The things I find via Facebook!

OTCM — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:30:00 GMT

Of all the misunderstandings I’ve heard or read about what OT is and/or what we supposedly do, this one is a real corker: According to a blog by a British OT with whom I’ve connected on Facebook, a member (I assume by her title: Baroness Finley) of the...(read more)

ADL activity: baking a file into a cake

OTCM — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:04:00 GMT

As I mentioned in my 8/24/09 post, some people consider being placed in a nursing home (long-term care/LTC facility) tantamount to a life sentence in a prison. The stereotype is powerful enough to make some people view even assisted living facilities...(read more)

What more could an OT have done?

OTCM — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:17:00 GMT

An article in Aging Well Magazine 1 tells the story about an elderly woman named Margaret who, for nearly 8 years, managed to stay in her own home despite strenuous efforts to assign her to long-term-care (LTC) "before her time". The article describes...(read more)

Where's the OT advocacy in LTC?

OTCM — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:08:00 GMT

I've seen several articles this year that make me wonder how many OTs working in Long Term Care (LTC) settings are incorporating advocacy into their daily practices. Advocacy is an integral part of OT practice in several domains and processes described...(read more)

(Not) In the Mood

OTCM — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:25:00 GMT

I have tried to stay away from writing in this blog about the political mess masquerading as “health reform” efforts; but the media din has given me writer’s block on any other topic. Maybe I’m just intimidated by the spectacular capacity for fiction-writing...(read more)

[Open-faced] Sandwich Generation

OTCM — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:25:00 GMT

I am one of millions of baby-boomers directly helping a parent deal with the challenges of aging. Probably unlike most of my cohorts, however, I am lucky to have a parent who isn’t in denial about her fading abilities. Additionally, my parents were never...(read more)

Adjectives-schmadjectives

OTCM — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:31:00 GMT

If you see a work of art and then find out that the artist is "disabled", does that change your opinion about the art? I got to thinking about this question after I posted last week’s blog on "suffering". As you know, the word "disabled" has its controversies,...(read more)

Another word-bone to pick

OTCM — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:58:00 GMT

Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional .- Unknown Anita, a reader of this blog, recently asked me what I think of the term "suffer" – as in "the woman ‘suffered a stroke’, the person ‘suffers from schizophrenia’ .…" My short answer is that we should...(read more)

A New Model for OT Consideration

OTCM — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:44:00 GMT

In my house I'm the boss. My wife is just the decision maker - Woody Allen In her article in OT Practice (7/28/08, pgs 15-18), "Working With the 'Difficult' Client", Costa states (pg 16), "Clients who arouse negative feelings are often those who do not...(read more)

A different kind of success

OTCM — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:35:00 GMT

How many of us OTs have proposed arts and crafts activities to people who are resistant to the idea because they believe they'll really stink at it? Or how often have our clients done really well with the component skills of a creative project, only to...(read more)