ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog

Something unfortunate has been happening in occupational therapy, and I’ve been watching it develop for years. At first it was a little distant but now it is uncomfortably close. The profession has always had its share of plucky innovators and small-scale entrepreneurs, but the landscape has shifted. An increasing number of young therapists are building a “personal brand,” launching a subscription service, or producing downloadable content with a logo and a tagline. These are not just side hustles - for some, it is the work. None of this is inherently bad - and I understand why it happens. Salary-to-debt ratios look like a punchline and clinical autonomy is chipped away by policy and productivity expectations. It makes perfect sense that people look elsewhere to find meaning, income, or both at the same time. But something gets distorted when the gravitational pull of monetization starts to reshape what counts as knowledge in the field. The distortion becomes even more concerning wh...

Like many others navigating the skies this week, I ran headlong into the perfect storm of weather delays, FAA flow restrictions, and cascading cancellations. By Wednesday it became clear I wasn’t getting to the AOTA Education Summit - at least not physically. I made the error of having too short a window for connecting flights... Rather than let the workshop vanish into the ether, I decided to take a different path and record the full presentation from home. In some ways this feels appropriate, because the talk itself is all about imagination, accessibility, and democratizing ethical inquiry . If people couldn’t gather in one room, then why not open the room to everyone? The presentation -  “Teaching Occupational Therapy Ethics Through Speculative Fiction” - explores how narrative forms can help students engage with complex moral problems in ways that feel emotionally safe and intellectually honest. Ethics education today often unfolds in a climate where students worry more abo...