ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog

I was happy to see the American Academy of Pediatrics publish their new policy statement about sensory integration.   I know that a lot of people are up in arms about this policy but in my estimation the AAP presents a very fair and balanced assessment. Defenders of 'sensory processing disoder'  are quick to point out that some more recent research was not included in the AAP review.  I was disappointed when I read Dr. Miller's letter to the editor where she talked about the 2007 RCT.  This was a great study and I think they did an impressive job of looking at limitations in previous studies but it was only a pilot study and it lacked statistical power, there were noted blinding problems, and it relied on GAS which many people believe opens up issues of expectancy and confirmation bias. My point here is not to rip apart people's efforts because actually it was a good step forward in our research.  The problem is that we can't point to studies like th...

You can file this blog post under "Things you might not know unless someone tells you, so I am telling you." I am not an expert in pain by any means, but I learned a simple lesson once that I wanted to express.  It is so simple to remember and I am disappointed that I learned it a little too late. Anyway, for a real expert on pain I refer you to Bronnie Thompson's blog at http://healthskills.wordpress.com/   Her blog is my final destination when I want to learn more about pain issues. On to when I learned my first real lesson about pain. Today I was reading an interesting article about the Numerical Rating Scale that you can find here .  The scale is imperfect, and it really doesn't work for children all the time.  For kids we use things like the Faces scale that seems easier for them to understand.  Still, degree of pain is an elusive thing to measure in kids - and Lacey taught me that better than anyone.  I remembered her today when I read ...