ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog

Continued from Part I - Read here. This exploration of some of Barton's writing outside of professional journals is offered for additional context to assist readers in understanding his concerns and passions that related to the occupational therapy profession. +++ The story of Lena got one reader of the Geneva Daily Times "all choked up."  This reader called himself "A Common Man" and wrote a letter to the editor on January 19, 1920 asking more about Lena's story: Now what I don't understand is this.  It was too bad that Lena couldn't take that elegant job in the 5&10 and I guess the manager was sorry too because they say it's hard to get good girls like Lena and her father would be glad of her help I'll say so. Well what I want to know is this.  Why couldn't Lena learn something at Oak Mount so that when she got well again she could get a better job... that would help her father more and the extra pay she's get would ...

(with deep apologies to the memory of Mary Reilly) Social media has been one long party this week in the occupational therapy world with therapists and membership associations popping champagne corks over the recent article that appeared in Medical Care Research and Review entitled "Higher hospital spending on occupational therapy is associated with lower readmission rates."  Click here for the abstract, but please go read the whole thing. Once you get beyond the abstract you get straight to the nut of the problem where the authors admit right in the introduction that "the relationship between hospital spending and quality...is poorly understood in the literature..." For background reading on this precise issue and concerns about how people are defining 'quality' in health care outcomes click here and here . There is unquestionably some 'value' (however one may choose to define that term) in decreasing hospital readmission rates.  People who ...

History provides context for understanding.  We are so far removed from the daily life struggles of 100 years ago and our own experiences are so very different that it is difficult for us to develop a clear understanding of  why events unfolded the way that they did. Occupational therapy is a health related profession that was born from the crucible of American society and culture at the turn of the 20th century.  As such, events from those times greatly influenced the thinking of our primary founders. George Edward Barton lived in Clifton Springs in Ontario County on the street behind the Clifton Springs Sanitarium (private) which had a capacity of 400 patients.  The Ontario County Sanitorium for Consumptives (Oak Mount) was the public facility, previously known as the County 'Poor House' in nearby East Bloomfield and had a capacity of around 40 patients. Barton was motivated by realities of the public health crisis of tuberculosis.  He was motivated beca...