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Showing posts from July, 2019

Driving and Community Mobility

One takeaway from the lecture today is that it is important how things are worded. Client centered care is important and kindness goes a long way when working with clients. This is especially true when dealing with something as sensitive as telling a client if they are going to be independent in driving or not. The three purposes of driving rehab are: 1) assessing individuals for safety and potential to drive, 2) evaluating people with physical disabilities for appropriate adaptive equipment, and 3) training individuals in the use of adaptive equipment and compensation techniques for driving. It is important to take into account common characteristics of certain diagnoses when working- frustration tolerance and hallucinations can be common in TBIs, left neglect can be common in strokes. Working with clients on autonomy and dealing with a loss of freedom after losing a license is important because it is a major life change. Procedural memory is something that can be lost in ...

Self Portrait of a Leader

I thought it was interesting seeing my self portrait of a leader before and after. Last year I chose a square face, signifying that leadership stems from nature over nurture. This year I chose a triangle face, signifying that leadership is an inborn trait. I think that my views have changed because some people have personality types that make them natural born leaders more easily than others. That was the only major change in my portrait. I still believe that OTs are natural born leaders. One more thing that I changed was glasses on my portrait, signifying that I believe I have had more leadership roles than other people my age. I may not have the most leadership roles in school, but compared to my peers that are not in OT school or did not go to grad school at all, I have had many more. OT school has broadened my horizons and gave me many opportunities for networking and leadership opportunities. I drew a big smile on both of my drawings, because I can think of many people who have be...

Nutrition and Aging Lecture

I really enjoyed the guest lecture today. One thing I found interesting is that the role of nutrition in aging can be primary, secondary, or tertiary. The primary prevention goal is to slow down the aging process. The s econdary goal is to slow down the progression of chronic nutrition related diseases, and the tertiary intervention is  medical nutrition therapy. We have sensory changes as we age and a lot of the processes in our bodies decline. Many older adults have at least one chronic condition and many have comorbidities. Food insecurity is a big issue in places like Memphis. Many older people do not have enough money to buy healthy food and turn to fast food which can have some very serious side effects, such as being 50% more likely to develop diabetes. Elderly clients after three days in the hospital lose an average of ten percent of their muscle mass. Client education on nutrition is very important to help the client holistically. Loss of lean body mass leads ...