It is great to compare both perspectives for a travel position. This site allows new grads to obtain recruiters perspective for traveling positions and the benefits.

The American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) Professional Development Tool (PDT) is an exclusive membership benefit for AOTA members developed and maintained by the CCCPD that facilitates the process of assessing individual learning needs and interests, creating a professional development plan, and documenting professional development activities. This could benefit novice therapists to continue growth and learning during their first years of practice.

As therapists we need to consider the client. However it is equally as important to consider caregivers, their skill level and readiness to take on a the challenge of caring for a loved one after a stroke.

Ideas for visual interventions and incorporating psychosocial needs for adults to promote a more holistic and occupation based session. It also describes common visual impairments with anatomical descriptions.

For OT's considering travel assignments or even a knew position. This blog from a traveling OT discusses a difficult situation while traveling, why and how she was able to remove herself from the facility. It enlightens new grads for warning signs when considering a new position.

Proper posture is essential throughout the lifespan. This is a great intervention for all clients to promote improved visual fields, swallowing, digestion, respiration etc.

Throughout my fieldwork experience I did not have a lot of opportunities to address contractures. This is a great resource for manual and splinting techniques to address contractures. It also includes modalities to support therapeutic interventions.

This is an awesome resource for novice therapists to consider goal writing with splinting. It discusses functional purposes for goal writing and progress notes function based.

Hand-splint prescription following stroke was found to be a common practice among OTs who perceive splints to be quite effective. A custom-made, volar forearm-based wrist-hand splint is the preferred splint among therapists to achieve a number of clinical aims such as improving ROM, stretching soft tissue contractures and reducing spasticity in the upper extremity. However, splint wearing schedules are varied, there is need to create a standardized wearing schedule based for EBP.

This video addresses splints that are included on the NBCOT, allows students to challenge when and why a splint is utilized including anatomy and common injuries that result in the use of splint.

After creating a schedule for an adult with dementia this would be a great resource to include enjoyable, meaningful activities. It provides families with a list of ideas to keep their loved ones engaged. More importantly it considers adaptations for activities to decrease frustration and provide a just right challenge. In conjunction with a therapist I believe this is a great tool for practitioners to supplement caregiver training and creating a regiment for the client.

This website addresses caregiver training, interventions and home modification for adults with dementia. This aspect that sets this resource apart is that is distinguishes between early, middle and late stages allowing family members to increase their knowledge of future interventions and identify signs when it is appropriate to adjust interventions, adaptations and supervision for their loved ones.

This article presents EBP for 7 interventions for clients with dementia. It is a summation of the evidence presented in order to provide quality service to adults with dementia with holistic interventions addressing all areas of occupation.

So much of a fieldwork experience is based on communication and developing a relationship with your Clinical instructor. If an idea is not communicated, expectations are not set and most importantly feedback is not communicated in a manner that is thorough and applicable it is difficult to grow. This website does a great job brining it back to the simple aspects of fieldwork that can make the process easier with a more open dialogue between student and educator.

This video is a great tool to send to family members and friends to promote occupational therapy. It allows people to see the many applications of OT, the setting ands clients that we can impact. It is difficult to describe the many roles and possibilities within OT. AOTA created a great video demonstrating what OT can do.

Defines the concepts within clinical reasoning for novice occupational therapists. It is a great breakdown to further develop reasoning skills within clinical reasoning with applications for the knowledge within OT practice

This website holds ideas for sensory modulation kits based on symptoms. It also has direct mental health components for people working through sobriety. Some of the kits are occupation-based to encourage engagement while others are focused primarily on sensory needs.

The BCAT's utility for identifying dementia versus mild cognitive impairment was excellent, with a sensitivity of .99, a specificity of .77, and an area under the receiver-operatingcharacteristic (ROC) curve of .95. Executive control, contextual memory, and attentional capacity items were the best predictors of diagnostic category and of instrumental activities of daily living. From a clinical standpoint, it is recommended a BCAT cut score of 37/38 for differentiating between persons with dementia and those with MCI. This means that patients who have scores of 37 and below are likely to have dementia. This research utilized a population residing in assisted living facilities. Future studies should address a cut off for mild cognitive impairment and non-impaired and community dwelling adults.

The article describes the development and validation of a short form for the Brief Cognitive Assessment tool, BCAT-SF. The article compares the psychometric properties with the short form versus the original. The items represented in the short form represent cognitive domains such as contextual memory, executive functioning, and attention. As a result the BCAT-SF differentiated between mild cognitive impairment and dementia with a sensitivity of .9 and specificity of .8. It was also able to predict IADL and ADL. While the study determined subjects with a score of 16 or below are likely to have dementia it did not establish a cut off score to distinguish MCI from non impaired participants. This is the next step for the researchers in validating the BCAT-SF for a quick, 5 minute or less cognitive screen with functional measures.

Cognitive impairment is under-recognized and misdiagnosed among community-dwelling older adults. At present, there is no consensus about which cognitive screening tool represents the 'gold standard.' However, one tool that shows promise is the Brief Cognitive Assessment Tool (BCAT), which was originally validated in an assisted living sample and contains a multi-level memory component (e.g. word lists and story recall items) and complex executive functions features (e.g. judgment, set-shifting, and problem-solving). 75 community dwelling adults took the assessment and the MoCA with a cut off score of <26. A cut off score for the BCAT was 45 after utilizing the results of the study to balance sensitivity and specificity at .81 and .8 respectively. In addition scores can be separated to interpret BCAT memory and executive dysfunction component scores.