Knowledge Check #17

Before coming to OT school I shadowed multiple OTs at Vanderbilt's Stallworth hospital for around 130 hours. I know now that this is a subacute care setting where clients come after being in acute care. It is an inpatient rehab hospital and they have just about any kind of client that you can see. One intervention that I frequently saw with clients who had suffered a stroke was word recognition therapy. The OT would write out each letter of the alphabet, sometimes in order and sometimes out of order depending on the severity of the client's stroke. The OT would then ask the client to come up with one word for each letter that is listed out. Sometimes they had them come up with words in different types of categories, such as items found around the house or colors. I know that this intervention is designed to help clients with recall, spelling, and handwriting, but I am curious about what else this intervention is designed to do. A lot of times this intervention was used in tandem with a puzzle to help with client's visuospatial processing as well. The therapists always had rehab puzzles that had specific items on them, such as 10 red balls and 2 parrots. The therapists would usually then ask the clients to count out each red ball or item of their choosing that they saw. This type of intervention was usually performed on clients who had more severe strokes.