OT Potential Podcast | Occupational Therapy CEUs

Around 4% of the population will experience a psychotic disorder in their lifetime, and about 100,000 youth and young adults in the US experience a first episode of psychosis each year. When it comes to supporting these individuals, the research is clear. Early intervention after that first episode is both clinically effective and cost-effective . In fact, major efforts have been underway in the U...

In the United States, therapy professionals are mostly educated in silos. So it’s no wonder that when we get into the real world, we often struggle with interprofessional collaboration. The answer is simple, and medicine, nursing, and pharmacy have already embraced it: interprofessional education. But if this is the way forward, why has therapy been slow to adopt it? Will we lose our distinct valu...

At the heart of rehab therapy is often behavior change. That powerful lever is how therapy is able to deliver such long-term, life-altering results. But let's be honest—it's also hard. I know I, for one, have sat in a therapy office as a patient, pledging to do my home exercise program, and then totally failed to do it. Motivational interviewing is an evidence-based approach that helps u...

As we've covered on the podcast, the world is heading toward a dementia crisis. The number of people living with dementia is projected to nearly triple by 2050, and low- and middle-income countries will be hit hardest. But there is real hope for changing that trajectory: prevention. The 2024 Lancet Commission estimates that nearly half of dementia cases could be prevented or delayed by addres...

More than 2.4 billion people around the globe live with a health condition that would benefit from rehabilitation, and more than 1 billion are living with a mental health condition. But how do they find the right therapist among the roughly 2.8 million OTs and PTs out there, not to mention SLPs and mental health professionals? The answer is pretty obvious: marketing. But in our busy clinical lives...

For as long as I've been an OT, I've been hearing about occupational therapy's advocacy to be recognized as behavioral health providers. This is frankly a little confusing, since OT has deep roots in mental health care — and many of us became OTs because of the unique way the profession holistically considers mental health and physical health, and how the two intersect in everyday f...

On one hand, it truly feels like we are on track for health technology to transform healthcare as we know it. On the other hand, we have to weigh the reality that many health tech solutions end up abandoned. This is especially true of consumer-facing health tech. Some of the latest research shows that around 70% of users abandon health tech apps within 100 days. Rehabilitation technology fares bet...

Healthcare has many challenges right now, but so many of them stem back to one looming global reality: By 2050, the number of people on our planet over age 65 is projected to double. It’s almost hard to wrap your head around the financial impact, the caregiving demands, and just how profoundly this shift will alter society. Luckily, the latest systematic research is crystal clear: to truly support...

Over 53 million people in the U.S. provide unpaid caregiving services. That's a stunning 1 in 6 people. The complex role of caregiving can entail everything from behavior management, symptom detection, and nutritional guidance to medication administration and transfer skills. As you can imagine, insufficient caregiver training can lead to increased patient risks for safety and injury, worseni...

The 2027 Physician Fee Schedule signals a continued restructuring of clinician payment-redistributing funds towards primary care and behavioral health while providing signals for what's coming next. OTs and PTs can no longer sit on the sidelines.  As straightforward, low-complexity care increasingly moves toward digital pathways and as patients increasingly access care through digital front d...

The latest clinical practice guideline for occupational therapy for autistic people across the lifespan urges us to shift away from deficit models toward neurodiversity-affirming, strengths-based care. But, what does this look like in practice? We know from the research that there are barriers at every level to delivering the type of support we aspire to- from rigid service silos to inconsistent l...

As we’ve interviewed expert clinicians on the podcast, clear trends have emerged. These clinicians have two things in common:  They have a pretty set arc to their treatment sessions.  They tend to work from “menus” of intervention options.  I’m pretty sure they do this- because this is what they’ve discovered works. But, I’ve never really seen this approach studied or discussed in research…until n...

When you look at the intersection of vision and reading in schools, the gaps are impossible to ignore. Consider the data: Two-thirds of American fourth graders cannot read at grade level . One in four school-age children has a vision problem . School vision screenings miss up to 75% of children with vision problems.  To make matters worse, standard school vision screenings frequently miss the func...

Only in this past year did it come on my radar that some therapy clinics are offering prenatal therapy. While I can personally relate to the desire to have a therapist guide you through such a complex stage of health, I thought that because it isn't offered widely, the evidence base would probably be weak. I couldn't have been more wrong. The evidence for prenatal prevention therapy is r...

The rapid rise of AI chat presenting as therapists has spurred a reaction to differentiate what AI can do versus the work of a licensed therapist. This is causing many people to look more closely at the question: What Is Therapy? In today’s discussion, we’ll both look back at how therapy has been understood historically and look forward to cutting-edge research like “interpersonal neural synchrony...

It’s hard to overstate how important it is for OTs and PTs to understand the new value-based care models. But, let’s be honest—they are an overwhelming and confusing alphabet soup (TEAM, LEAD, GUIDE, ACO REACH), and that’s just the acronyms. For OTs and PTs, understanding these models will be the difference between being embedded in the healthcare team of the future—where we deliver highly valued...

We all know that documentation is a heavy burden for therapists. But home health therapists arguably face one of the heaviest loads, with mandated OASIS reporting layered on top of standard clinical documentation — a dual requirement unique to this setting. They also face challenges that clinic-based therapists rarely encounter: coordinating care across disciplines — physicians, nurses, and other...

It feels like in every practice area, the importance of the vagus nerve is being talked about. But nowhere is it being researched as much as vagal nerve stimulation post-stroke. And the initial results are promising — as long as it is paired with rehabilitation. The stimulation sets the body up for new motor learning, but then the rehab actually creates the change. In this beginner's course,...

In talking to therapy start-ups this year, I've heard a common stumbling block: Credentialing. And, honestly, I was shocked when I dug into the space. It feels like the seemingly boring task of getting credentialed with insurance has turned into what honestly feels like a world of sharks. It seems like there are 3 trends at play: This is truly a bureaucratic headache: You do need to buckle up...

In the United States, approximately 49,000 people die by suicide each year . And, unfortunately, the rate of suicide has increased substantially since 2000, up about 30% .  Suicide remains among the 10 leading causes of death among persons aged 10-64 years and is the second leading cause of death among those aged 10-14 and 25-34. While these trends are multifactorial, they are particularly distres...

Fixing healthcare is simple: More people need preventative, conservative care earlier. But getting to this fix is a massively complex web of structural policy choices. The reality is that our modern healthcare system often misaligns incentives, rewarding the management of chronic sickness over the investment in wellness. We've seen a shift toward market consolidation, where vertically integra...

SEO has long been the absolute best way to maintain a consistent therapy client caseload for outpatient therapists. But, for therapists in all settings really, understanding and optimizing your digital real estate is often a secret sauce for career growth. In today's course, we want to help you: Recognize how important your digital real estate is to your practice. Optimize your presence with...

For years, "Occupational Therapy in Primary Care" has felt like a professional aspiration-a "gold standard" we discussed in classrooms but rarely saw in job postings. Today, that reality is shifting. Following the 2020 statutory mandates in Norway and Sweden that solidified OT as a required primary care service, the global tide is turning. In the United States, we are moving pa...

Thumb osteoarthritis is a common condition in older adults. By age 50, the prevalence is about 8% in men and 25% in women-and it increases with age, with meta-analysis data suggesting that by age 80, approximately 39% of women have radiographic signs of thumb base OA. Conservative treatment is widely acknowledged as first-line care for thumb CMC OA, including occupational and physical therapy, par...

The landscape of healthcare has been changed forever with the introduction of AI. Already, 1 in 3 adults are turning to chatbots to ask health related questions. For younger adults under age 30, the shift is even faster-nearly 30% now use AI specifically for mental health and emotional support. Amid these broad changes is a specific question for us as therapists:  What happens when the chatbot sta...