Allie's OT Blog

Spoiler Alert: I highly recommend reading the book titled "Inside the O'Briens" by Lisa Genova before reading this post :)  In her book titled Inside the O’Brien’s, Lisa Genova brings her readers in to the life of Joe O’Brien, a Massachusetts police officer diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease. Like most people, Joe had never heard of this disease before his diagnosis, and he chalked up his symptoms (mood outbursts, falls, clumsiness, muscle soreness) to stress from work and a past knee injury. The onset of symptoms usually comes in the 40’s or 50’s, so sadly the symptoms of HD are easily overlooked or attributed to other factors, such as stress, lack of sleep and aging. Another troubling characteristic of HD is its genetic factor. As Joe found out after his diagnosis, children of parents with HD have a 50% chance of inheriting the gene ad developing the disease themselves. Because the disease usually shows itself in middle adulthood, people with HD usually are not aw...

        This Netflix documentary follows 34-year old woman named Lotje as she recovers from a massive hemorrhagic stroke. I chose this documentary because after reading the description, I was surprised at how young Lotje was to have suffered a stroke. I also wanted to see what her recovery journey looked like, as I might one day be helping those who have suffered strokes regain independence through occupational therapy.   My Beautiful Broken Brain begins with Lotje’s account of the incident. She went to bed after a perfectly normal, busy day, and was awakened in the middle of the night with a blinding headache. She remembers knowing that something was terribly wrong and that she needed help immediately, and she found her way to a nearby hotel after enduring bouts of nausea and vomiting. However, she was unable to communicate with anyone to tell them what was wrong, and she was eventually found collapsed in the hotel bathroom. She woke up in the hospital after...

In her TED talk, "Multiple Sclerosis Made Me A Better Runner," Kayla Montgomery explains that she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at the young age of 15. I chose the topic of MS because one of my professors from college was recently diagnosed with MS, and I have only a minimal understanding of this particular disease and want to learn more. The main thing that I knew before watching this TED talk was that MS affects the myelin sheath surrounding axons, which affects nerve conduction. There is a wide variety of symptoms attributed to MS, and Kayla’s major were fatigue and numbness in her legs while running. She explains that she initially let the diagnosis overpower her life, and she spent a whole year in self pity and denial. Running was a passion of hers before the diagnosis, and she almost let MS take that away from her. However, a critical point in her journey came at a church retreat. During this time, she realized that she needed to adjust her attitude and persp...

The Children's Hand Skills Framework is a conceptual tool used to describe and analyze children's hand skills during assessment and intervention. The CHSF divides hand skills into 6 categories, based on the extent to which their hands are in contact with objects or parts of the body or not. These categories include manual gesture and body contact; these two categories do not involve contact with a specific object. The next categories are object-related hand skills, adaptive skilled hand use, bimanual use. The final category is general quality of hand use skills, such as accuracy or pace of children's hand skills. The population targeted with this theory, as indicated by the title, is children, and involves any diagnosis. Hand skills adequate enough to enable children to participate in daily occupations are considered functional in this framework. Object-related hand skills include actions such as reaching, turning/rotating, throwing, or catching an object. Adaptive skilled ...

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Triple Aim has, as the name implies, three main goals: improving the patient experience of care, improving the health of populations, and reducing the per capita cost of health care. Unfortunately, the United States doesn't score very well in the health care area, so I believe that these goals are worth the time and effort necessary to see them through to reality. Occupational Therapy certainly plays a role in each of these goals. One of OT's overarching themes is that it is client-centered, thus touching on the goal of improving patient experience. OTs also work in health promotion, or the use of discipline-specific techniques to assist people in achieving their health-related goals. OT's discipline-specific techniques would be occupations, or meaningful daily activities. OTs use client-centered occupations (what each individual wants/needs to be able to do in their daily routine), as well as adaptations to maximize the pursui...