OT Potential Podcast | Occupational Therapy CEUs

Dyslexia is the most common form of neurodivergence.  It affects around 20% of the population , meaning that people with dyslexia are on almost every occupational therapy professional’s caseload. And yet, not enough OT-specific research and resources have been devoted to how we can help this population.  Today, we look at a leading theory of dyslexia that basically reads like a call to action for...

For OT professionals working with adults with intellectual disabilities it can feel like there is a  lack of resources around best practices for working with this population.  Today’s article flips that long-held narrative on its head. The authors set out to find evidence to inform OT for adults with intellectual disability—and to their own surprise they found so much it has become 3 papers.  We’l...

Maternal deaths are on the rise, here in the United States.  And, we have a postpartum mental health crisis .  In OT 90% of us are women, and many of us have personally experienced the inadequate support given to birthing individuals.  But, not enough of us have stepped back to ask: why aren’t we (with our training in mental health & daily participation) helping women in the hospital after bir...

I once heard a neuroscientist say:  Many of our frameworks end up being wrong—because the body is more complicated than we ever imagined.  Pain science perfectly illustrates this. We are living in an era where new frameworks are being written—because classical understandings of pain have not only been inadequate, they have led to ineffective and even harmful treatment.  Today, we look at a new fra...

The main finding of this important research from JAMA is extremely promising for early intervention OT professionals. In the study, greater early intervention service intensity was associated with better functional gains.  But, there’s a problem.  Federal spending per child on early intervention services has declined over the past decade. And, in this climate of tightening budgets:  Most children...

The number of OT’s providing perinatal care is on the rise.  Which is exciting…and necessary.  There remain so many gaps in the care of new and expecting moms, among which is treating incontinence.   As we’ll see in our featured journal article,  a staggering percentage of women experience incontinence postnatally, despite the known effectiveness of pelvic floor muscle training as a treatment. The...

The OT treatment approaches that are gaining support from evidence, seem to have one common thread between them: The clients set their own goals.  Today, we look at a pioneer of this client-centered process, The CO-OP Approach™. We’ll dive into a new research article where, yet again, we see CO-OP outperforming conventional therapy—this time for children with cerebral palsy and spina bifida. After...

The number of children diagnosed with ADHD has been steadily increasing . Now it is estimated that 1/10 children will be diagnosed with ADHD at some point. Even though about half of these children receive some type of behavioral treatment, there has been a lack of studies around OT-specific support for ADHDer children.  In this one hour OT CEU course, we will look at a study of an OT program for A...

Self-determination interventions are linked to positive academic and functional attainment results—and, most compellingly, can improve post-secondary outcomes.  But what does it look like for OT professionals to foster self-determination in the school setting?  In this one hour course, we’ll breakdown a scoping review that examines the Independence Curriculum, which is designed to enhance middle-s...

If you are an occupational therapy professional working with autistic people, you’ve likely heard of strengths-based practice (SBP).  But, does this approach work?  And, what are the benefits of it?  In this one hour OT CEU course we will discuss a scoping review that explores these questions. As we’ll see, strengths-based interventions were related to: Positive social engagement Learning Self-adv...

Where does OT fit in psoriatic arthritis (PsA) care?  In this one hour course we’ll dive into a comprehensive guideline for psoriatic arthritis treatment, which recommends patients utilize a mix of non-pharmacological tools, like occupational therapy.  This article will help you brush up on psoriatic arthritis, see OT within a holistic approach to care, and appreciate the importance of individuali...

What does planetary health have to do with occupational therapy?  The author’s of this week’s article argue that engagement with environmental sustainability is foundational for our profession.  The authors aim to help OT students and professionals translate environmental awareness to practical action. They theorize 3 skills to do so:  Clinical reasoning Bi-directional questioning  Interprofession...

Is AI going to replace occupational therapy? There’s no doubt that this technology will transform healthcare. It will surely accelerate the existing move toward healthcare taking place at home.  To help us wrap our minds around this transformation, we review an article that explores three technologies: Artificial intelligence Blockchain Wearables The article explores how the above technologies are...

Spasticity can be present in many of the conditions we treat as occupational therapy professionals.  And, it can add significant cost and burden for our patients.  The article we are discussing in this 1-hour course gives you a big picture overview of the science behind what we know (and don’t know!) about spasticity.  You’ll find certain approaches (that I’ve personally used!) that have NOT been...

The research we are discussing on this 1-hour episode really drives home the complex connection between depression and 3 neurodegenerative diseases:  Alzehimer’s Disease Parkinson’s Disease Huntington Disease Even though depression has a high comorbidity with all of these diseases, you’ll learn why it should not be an assumed part of the disease process. Instead, depression should be recognized as...

Plagiocephaly has historically been thought of as a benign, cosmetic issue.  But, the seminal study we are looking at during this 1-hour course indicates that severe to moderate skull deformity may be best understood as a biomarker for developmental vulnerability. As we’ll see, moderate to severe skull deformity was linked with lower cognitive and academic outcomes, when the children reached schoo...

About half of cancer survivors report difficulty with ADLs and a third difficulty with iADLs. But, unfortunately, only around 1 in 10 older adults with cancer who have a known functional limitation receive a referral to OT or PT. Even less make it to an eval. And, even less than that, complete their full course of rehab. Why are we failing to support such a large percentage of this population?  An...

The research we’ve explored on the podcast, seems to be pointing to a new reality:  The future of healthcare will be in the home.  But, how will we get there? How will our homes ever be ready to age in place? The transition is going to be a complex story of the right technologies, the right funding, and the right narratives. All of which will ultimately lead to the end goal of tech adoption.  The...

As occupational therapy providers, we have a duty to truly understand the word “occupation.”  This means acknowledging the role occupation has played in shaping societal policies and norms, many of which are fundamentally unjust. We also need to admit that our professional knowledge base, itself, is skewed. The foundations of OT have evolved from an exclusionary context that privileged White skin,...

The article we are looking at today challenges us to look critically at occupation—and how it can be used as a tool for justice or injustice.  The reality is that many of us have narrowed our view of occupation into the medicalized and individualized categories of ADLs.  But, we know from research (and lived experience!) that occupation is much more complex, interconnected, and powerful. The autho...

It’s no secret that our healthcare systems are built to react to sickness and health events—not to keep people healthy in the first place.  If we want to get serious about producing health for our patients, we have to start shifting our healthcare system to address social determinants of health .   But, how is such a seismic shift even possible—and what’s your role as an occupational therapy pract...

Both participation-focused OT and knowledge translation are hot topics in OT right now.  And, in this one-hour course we will explore a research article that puts forth a knowledge translation roadmap to accelerate the uptake of participation-focused OT assessments and intervention.  These are both big topics in their own right, and when you mesh them together it feels like more than one therapist...

Children are not little adults. Their brains are actively developing. Because of this neuroplasticity, one might assume they would more quickly and fully recover from a traumatic brain injury (TBI).  This is not the case.  A brain injury can have a more devastating impact on a child than a similar injury in a mature adult. ( Brain Injury Association of America )  This is what makes comprehensive,...

Falls are a complex problem.  This makes preventing them a perfect target for our OT skillset.  This week we are looking at an article that explores “the state of the science” on preventing falls in hospitalized patients. The authors walk us through: The scope of the problem  The science (or lack thereof) supporting different interventions While many of the interventions sound simple (like gripper...

When we think of hand therapy , we tend to think of it as a practice area with an  abundance of research. But, the mapping review of hand therapy interventions we examine this episode reminds us that there are also sizable gaps in the research—especially when it comes to more complex diagnoses.  This means that when OTs are working with upper extremity conditions, we still need to pay careful atte...