ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog

Private and elite clubs were vehicles of socialization and business transaction during the Gilded Age.  Clubs were often restricted in membership and members were highly scrutinized before being offered the opportunity to join.  The Tavern Club in Boston is one example of an elite social club.  It was established in 1884 and was a gathering place where the members were focused on fine dining, lectures, and the arts.  Notable members included Charles Eliot Norton, William Dean Howells, and Henry Cabot Lodge.  Herndon (1892) described the club as "an organization of good fellows, mostly artists, musicians, and lawyers, who breakfast and dine together with more or less regularity in their snug and artistically fashioned club-house on Boylston Place, just off the busy thoroughfare of Boylston Street by the Commons."  The entrance dues in 1892 was a $50.00 fee.  The approximate 'economic status' of that amount in 2015 terms is $11,100.00, which provid...

Reciprocity .  It is customary in ethics to discuss the connection between purpose and values in terms of reciprocity.  The body of knowledge in any discipline - that is, the reflective concepts and the action of technology - is derived from its reciprocal relationship to the purpose of its services... Searching for patronage and constructing a new support system is a dangerous venture for any discipline. ...The shift to a client system represents, perhaps, a desperate strategy to survive under the awesome pressure of the self-interest of medicine.  - Reilly, (1984). Last year I noted that an article published in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy furthers the politicization of the professional association by endorsing very partisan approaches to health care (aka 'Triple Aim' model).  The chronic difficulty with labeling something as 'partisan' is that there will always be that segment of the population that agrees with that approach and does not se...

One year ago I posted about the American Occupational Therapy Association process of an Ad Hoc committee to delineate the role in case management for occupational therapy in primary care and mental health. My concern at that time centered around two primary points: 1. Case management is not a recognized domain of concern of occupational therapy practice. 2. There is a difference between 'things that can be done with OT skills' vs. 'what constitutes OT practice.'  I believe that occupational therapists should be delimiting practice and clarifying professional roles, not blurring them. My objections have nothing at all to do with case management, which I consider a worthwhile and valuable endeavor.  It is my opinion that these are worthwhile and valuable endeavors for others and should not be something that OTs concern themselves with excessively.  The concern has a lot to do with resource allocation. Despite this type of feedback that was given to the RA, the...

I pulled this out of a fifteen year old journal tonight and decided to post it.  My daughter will be 21 years old next week so I thought I would remind her of a story. +++ 3/14/01 I need to explain a couple seemingly disconnected points. Casey (my youngest daughter) will write novels or be an artist someday - I am sure.   She writes constantly, and she is only in kindergarten.   I find scraps of paper all over the house, and she will take books from my library and sit down to spend hours copying the words.   She is like a little monk scribe, preserving the world's knowledge before the Dark Ages. It is so funny to see what she copies.   The other day I found a couple pages about an annual spaghetti dinner, complete with driving directions.   I also found a page about renal physiology from a medical text.   Of course she has no idea what she is writing, but it is just the act of copying that she seems to love so much. She surp...

Sometimes images can convey an action or feeling better than words, so I offer this as representation of the occupational therapy profession's response to the Washingtonian article that some in the profession believed was overly critical: Like the Spartans, many occupational therapists responded to the message in the article by killing the messenger.  That might not be the best idea. I made the following comments in the article but since I am not assured that those comments will persist I thought I would document them here. Some OTs are concerned that the article is unfair and undermines the legitimacy of OT in general and their work in particular.  First of all, a magazine article can't undermine the legitimacy of anything. It is a piece of journalism. As such it has some reporting elements and invariably there are some differing opinions injected. Those opinions exist outside of the magazine article. The article does not undermine legitimacy; the opinion...