Media Project

Throughout this project, I gained a lot of knowledge and surprised myself with what I already knew. One of the most useful things I learned is that an activity can help a client in numerous ways. At first, I was focusing on Dennis' left neglect. I though the plant hanger would be useful to work on using that left hand because it's pretty difficult to tie a knot with only one hand. This activity would encourage him to use both hands. But then as I started thinking deeper, not only was this activity client-centered, but it was working on many other things that could be potential barriers in the future. It worked on spatial relation, finger flexion and extension, left/right discrimination, and even could work on his shoulder ROM by having him hang the planter in different areas of his rehab room. I was very happy with the outcome and feel like this would be an effective intervention for Dennis.

When I first started thinking of the assignment, I was stuck because I felt like I didn't really know the best intervention to work on a lot of his barriers. I was stuck in an EBP mindset and even did some research to see what was best for left neglect and didn't come up with anything too useful to me from an OT standpoint. I was trying to bring in that previous knowledge to make sure his intervention was effective but realized down the road that I was thinking too much into it. Once I started breaking down and individualizing his barriers, the hanging planter began to fit into place as the perfect client-centered intervention for Dennis. I now know that a big part of our job is to make sure the client is working towards his goals, finding his "clinical carrot", and doing all this in a creative, client centered manner.

This assignment is definitely going to impact the way I view interventions in upcoming fieldwork. We really focused on the client-centered part of intervention for this project and I believe that's because that is what distinguishes a good OT from a great OT. In fieldwork, I'm going to be looking out for that. Even as an OT myself, this project has made sure I never forget the importance of client-centered activities in our profession.