ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog

The day before Christmas eve is always busy, and yesterday was no exception. The office will be closed for several days and there were so many things that needed to be done. Payroll had to be audited and sent out, some schools had paperwork deadlines for the end of the second quarter, schedules needed to be coordinated for time off so we were sure to have coverage for those families that wanted services next week, some end of the year banking needed to be done... on and on. It was busy, and the message was delivered this year on cue in the form of Tina. At the very end of the day we had three families jostling past each other between appointments and Tina burst through the front door on a mission. She made a bee-line straight toward me, absolutely disregarding all the social cues that might have otherwise indicated she needed to wait. It didn't matter that other parents were standing near me, that we were engaged in a conversation, or that her own mom was trying to corral he...

From: A future OT student Sent: Sunday, December 13, 2009 7:07 PM To: chris@abctherapeutics.com Subject: from a future OT student: wanted to say thanks Dear Dr. Alterio, I just wanted to thank you for all of the great stories you posted on your blog... I am writing to you because I have been searching for stories by occupational therapists where they actually help people, where they make a real difference. After going through prerequisites, applications and finally being accepted into two of my top choice schools- I have found terrible posts on [a website] posted by ex occupational therapists and some physical therapists which all revolve around how occupational therapy is an ineffective, terrible profession to go into. They warn people to stay away from the profession. Many people have written in response to those posts saying that because of them, they have changed their mind. You helped me to not change my mind. I started looking into occupational therapy after having worked with s...

The National Autism Center published a comprehensive National Standards report regarding evidence-based practice guidelines for children and young adults who have autism. The report is an excellent summary of research about intervention methods and effectiveness. It was particularly interesting to me that this report referenced and hoped to expand on the New York State Early Intervention Clinical Practice Guidelines for autism spectrum disorders which of course is a document that is familiar to many of the families in my geographic area. The NYS guidelines were published ten years ago so an update to include new research was needed. The new report focuses on quantitative studies and in this sense some important occupational therapy literature may not have met the inclusion criteria. There have been some excellent qualitative studies completed that make important occupational therapy contributions to best-practice considerations so I am really looking forward to the next report th...

In general, people are not inspired to continue monitoring post-disaster relief operations after most of the television cameras leave. So any commentary on this topic may seem to be johnny-come-lately except for those who sustain their interest and understand how big the problem really is. This is an attempt to refocus a little bit of attention on an issue - and I am not as interested in getting preachy as I am in shining a flashlight on issues that are good fuel for action. There is a great competition for students to examine the challenges that people who are elderly or disabled face during and after disasters in their own cultural and local contexts. I hope some students see this and become interested in the topic. If you need some motivation for outrage, read this first.