Getting away from nursing homes. The Green House , care is financed by Medicaid, Medicare or private funds, people live in cottages with private rooms and private baths. They participate, when able, in food preparation and eat in a communal setting that is more like a home dining room than a cafeteria.

This evidence supports occupational therapy's role as coaches for clients during driving interventions. Clients were able to sustain learning from feedback the instructors gave during on-road training for 4 to 8 weeks. In addition, when addressing community mobility issues OTs must focus on visual, cognitive, motor, and educational interventions. Studies examined during the systematic review found that cognitive perceptual training can reduce at-fault crashes per year of driving, delay driving cessation, and improve driving performance of clients who sustained a stroke.

For this blog post, I want to concentrate on how we, as future OTs, can help educate family and friends on how to plan a successful visit to a loved one living with dementia. When visiting a person with dementia, it is important for family and friends to approach the time spent together differently than they are used to doing. Some ideas that we can offer family, friends, and caregivers include planning visits that are beneficial for both your loved one and yourself, staying calm during visits, keeping eye contact and calling them by name, visiting as frequently as possible, and planning a visit around a theme.

Since many people with dementia often have difficulty initiating an activity, the person visiting them will need to prepare in advance to make the visit a successful and enjoyable one. Some themes OTs can suggest to visitors are music visits, celebrating the person visits, faith or spirituality visits, table talk visits, touch visits, active living visits, and pet visits. Music visits can involve bringing music associated with holidays and special events and engaging in a sing along. Celebrating the person visits can involve items related to the person's past work, hobbies, or community service. Faith or spirituality visits may include taking inspirational books or objects with spiritual importance. Table talk visits may involve taking in muffins, coffee, and a newspaper and discussing current events or simply talking about family news. Touch visits may include aromatherapy and giving massages to help create a relaxing atmosphere. Active living visits may include going for a walk, gardening, or engaging in a craft project. Pet visits can include bringing in the persons favorite animal and allowing them time to spend with it.

In addition, it is important to educate family and friends about ending a visit with a loved one experiencing the condition. It is often difficult to end a visit as many times the person may become upset or ask to leave with you. One suggestion OTs can offer is taking them to a group activity and slipping out when they are actively engaged and enjoying it. Another suggestion may include visiting prior to mealtime to refocus them to a part of their daily routine or even asking a staff member to sit with them for a few minutes after you leave.

On the ChangingAging website, I found a blog written by Jeanette Leardi focusing on ageism and new fitness facilities. She described an open house she attended on a new 130,000 square feet fitness facility offering a variety of resources to its members. Unlike her current fitness club, she believed that the new facility might offer more to people in her age group (over 60). However, the reality was that the club's target audience was the younger population. At the facility they did not offer an indoor track or an area with exercise equipment free from distraction (TVs and loud music). The locker rooms were elegant but the lockers had lock combinations with small number font, which was hard for her to read. In addition, she explained that half of the facility was devoted to kids. They had their own indoor and outdoor playgrounds, eating areas, and craft rooms (they even offered a baby-sitting service).

Leardi felt that a fitness facility offering an indoor track to walk, jog, and run on is enjoyable for older adults and people of all ages. She explained that these tracks addresses older adult's needs and their desire for quality of experience. In fact, the track was a place for social interaction and individual reflection and mindful meditation. When she addressed these concerns with the activities director at the facility, the director stated that they did not even think about older adults (providing a track) when designing the facility.

After reading this blog post, I felt that OT can have a huge role in collaborating with fitness facility designers. To include people of all ages in their development, OTs can advocate for older adults and make recommendations for their inclusion. As Leardi pointed out, simply including a track free of distraction would be one great recommendation

I feel that this article has an important place in occupational therapy practice, because it provides evidence for supporting social engagement through motivated internet use in elderly clients who may be isolated from society. This can be a strategy in the OT tool kit for an elderly client who may wish to seek social engagement, because this type of intervention supports OT practice in that it is client-centered. Instead of teaching basic internet use, OTs can coach older clients on how to navigate their personal interests on the Internet and provide adaptations for successful use.

A blog written by Bonnie Moore on ChangingAging.org focuses light on an important concept of retirement living. In the article Moore highlights the concept she calls the Golden Girls Shared Living, a lifestyle of shared housing for mature adults. She found that in 2000 there were 820,000 households consisting of singles age 46 to 64 that shared housing with non-relatives, and in 2013 there was an increase of shared living where 1,090,000 singles were living together. This typically has taken place due to high living costs and loneliness that occurs when children grow older and their spouse is no longer around.

For occupational therapy, this is a great solution for some adults who wish to age in place and have more social support. With the baby boom generation reaching retirement, many may face financial struggles or a decreased support system while living alone. By helping older adults find roommates in similar circumstances, OTs can help them increase their social support system and relieve some of the financial burden placed on them when living alone. In addition, Moore offers some great advise in the blog about picking roommates, advertising for roommates, and developing housing agreements or leases.

Keyboarding Without Tears has been developed to teach basic keyboarding skills. This may be a viable assessment tool with advances in technology within the school systems.

Occupational therapy focuses on lifestyle modification, health promotion, remediation of physical and visual impairments, and maximizing self-care independence, all of which are directly and adversely affected by diabetes and its complications. Occupational therapy practitioners focus on helping clients take charge of their diabetes as opposed to being controlled by it, so they can participate in everyday activities.
According to a fact sheet published by the American Occupational Therapy Association, OT practitioners can help clients develop measurable goals consistent with the seven behaviors advocated by the American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE): healthy eating, being active, monitoring, taking medications, problem solving, healthy coping and reducing risks.

This news article is about clinicians and game developers at USC advancing and expanding video games for rehabilitation. It also discusses the role of OT in software development, further advancing the field.
Proffitt is part occupational therapist, part game developer - a personification of interdisciplinary research that USC is known for in biomedical and health informatics.

This news article discusses hand pain with cell phone use and provides techniques to help reduce the risk of developing hand pain. Tendon gliding exercises are useful along side stretching.

Schilling, Washington, Billingsley, and Deitz (2003) conducted a study to determine the effect of therapy balls as seating options for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The intention was to observe in-seat behavior and handwriting legibility changes as well as social acceptability among students and teachers after implementing this new seating option (Schilling, Washington, Billingsley, & Deitz, 2003). Among the three students that participated in the study, all improved in-seat behavior and word legibility (Schilling et al., 2003). It also was determined that therapy balls were acceptable among students and teachers (Schilling et al., 2003). During the intervention phase of the study, therapists and teachers reported various differences in movement between each student which indicated the need for self-modulation of personal sensory needs (Schilling et al., 2003). Results indicate that the use of therapy balls with children who have difficulty staying in their seat and attending to task may be a viable option for therapists in the school system (Schilling et al., 2003).

Prunty, Barnett, Wilmut, and Plumb (2014) conducted a research study that examined handwriting pauses in children diagnosed with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). They explained that problems with handwriting was the main reason for children to be referred to a healthcare professional for evaluation and treatment (Prunty et al., 2014). Their research revealed that children diagnosed with DCD actually produced less text and paused 60% more than their typically developing peers during free-writing tasks (Prunty et al., 2014). In fact, there has been little knowledge in the characterization of these pauses and this study was produced to determine these categorizations among children with and without DCD (Prunty et al., 2014). They used 28 children with DCD and 28 children without DCD and had them complete a writing task from the Detailed Assessment of Speed of Handwriting (DASH) (Prunty et al., 2014). They used four pause time-frames (250ms to 2 s, 2-4 s, 4-10 s, and > 10 s) and found that children with DCD had more pauses above 10 seconds versus the typical children (Prunty et al., 2014). In addition, they determined that the DCD group had less automaticity with handwriting, and this supports the need for addition time with written examinations for these children (Prunty et al., 2014). More importantly, early intervention for children diagnosed with DCD should be provided for the development of efficient handwriting skills (Prunty et al., 2014).

This Blog discusses a study that found stroke risk increases with job stress. They note the increase in unhealthy behaviors associated with having a high-stress job.

A recent study found that individuals with autism have increased perfusion in the frontal brain regions. This is important because blood flow is reduced as the brain develops in typical individuals. This supports the delayed development of socio-emotional cognition.

This study may provide useful information during occupational therapy stroke rehabilitation interventions. The researchers investigated the number of sit-to-stands (STS) completed by typical community-dwelling individuals. They found that on average the STS maneuver is completed at least 45 times per day. This information might serve as a foundation for rehab goals aimed at increasing STS activity among individuals with fewer daily STSs.

This recent systematic review and meta-analysis provides support of neuromuscular electric stimulation combined with other intervention modalities as a treatment option as it provides improvements in spasticity and range of motion in patients after stroke.

This study found similarities in handwriting features of parent-off spring and siblings. Thus validating that genes play an important role in the development of writing habits from one generation to next generation and within the same generation.

This study focused on an animal rescue training program for at risk youth. They found that those who had participated increased their patience, formed attachments, made better choices, helped others or volunteered, and related to the animals. This study provides useful evidence that training rescue animals may be a meaningful occupation for at-risk youth and may provide therapeutic benefits.

This articles assesses the cost effectiveness of community based occupational therapy compared with typical care in older individuals with dementia and their care givers from a societal perspective. The intervention consisted of 10 sessions of occupational therapy over five weeks, including cognitive and behavioral interventions, to teach these individuals how to use aids to compensate for cognitive decline and care givers in coping behaviors and supervision. The study found that the total cost of those in the intervention group was lower for general primary doctor visits.