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Throughout my internship, I learned a lot of practical knowledge within the fields of occupational therapy, physical therapy, and orthotics/prosthetics. To get the most from my experience during the internship, I made sure I was present most weeks and that I was always on time and ready to learn. I also asked many questions when I wasn’t sure of a procedure that the therapists were performing. This mentorship prepared me for the future by exposing me to the medical field, which is where I would like to work later in my life. From this internship, I learned that occupational therapy and physical therapy are not areas of medicine that I would like to study, but I did learn that I would love to work with kids once I enter the medical field. My advice for future students who join HMP would be to choose a field in which they would like to pursue later in life so that they will know whether or not that field is something that they are actually interested in.
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My name is Lindsey Bott, and I serve as an Intern in the Occupational Medicine and Physical Therapy Departments at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta in Cumming. My Mentor is Keith May, a Physical Therapist and the Site Supervisor at the clinic. After interning in the Occupational Medicine Department earlier this year, I decided to conduct research on how the treatment plans for patients with Sensory Processing Disorder, provided by the Occupational Therapists at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, benefit the everyday lives of these children. I conducted research on many different modes of treatment and therapy plans for patients with SPD, and then I interviewed Occupational Therapists at CHOA. I learned that treatment plans and therapies that are tailored to the diagnosis of each child truly enrich the lives of patients with SPD. Parents could make even more of a difference in their children’s lives if they would continue these treatment modalities in their home environments. Future applications could also be made in school environments if Art, Music, and Special Education teachers could participate in simple monthly treatment sessions.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tShavGuo0_E
In terms of the information that I will be presenting in my relevant presentation, I will prepare for this by creating a script of the things that I would like to say during my presentation. Creating a script will allow me have an idea of exactly how I would like to present my information without it seeming as if I’m just reading off of notecards. Another way I will prepare for my presentation is by going through my website a few times to make sure that everything is neat, precise, and easy for the audience to follow. Also, when I present I have a tendency to sway, so my posture is also something that I will need to watch out for when doing my final presentation. Arky, B. (n.d.). Treating sensory processing issues. Retrieved February 25, 2018, from https://childmind.org/article/treating-sensory-processing-issues/
This article describes how physical activity, specifically, physical play in a gym environment, helps children with sensory processing disorder to better focus. The article describes how Dr. Jean Ayres, an Occupational Therapist, added two additional senses of body awareness and movement to our traditional five senses to describe the coordination of children with sensory processing disorder. Occupational therapists assess children for their level of disability, and at this time, determine whether play may help them in their treatment at that time. Nancy Peske, an Occupational Therapist and co-author of the book Raising a Sensory Smart Child, writes “A child who is overreactive (hypersensitive) to vestibular input needs to swing and spin to retrain his brain” (Peske). Therapists use this treatment, and if effective, will ask parents to follow through during the week as well. Potential Quotes: Caregivers work with OTs to create a detailed schedule of therapies specific to each child. (Meanwhile, Miller, who does intensive parent training at her STAR Center in Denver, prescribes not a sensory diet but a “sensory lifestyle.” “We’re all too busy” to maintain a sensory diet, Miller says, “so we need to build it into our family routine.”) Also, Children with vestibular issues have poor motor skills and a lack of balance and may seem “lost in space”—not unlike the sensation astronauts experience in zero gravity. Something called Astronaut Training, which employs things like spinning to music, has been developed to address that issue. I should be able to use this source in my research, as most of the treatment plans include some type of gym play. Also, the article discusses the Occupational Therapist whose research began gym treatment for Sensory Processing Disorder. This is a reliable source, because the website is a reliable website that includes information on children’s health and wellness issues. Also, Ms. Arky’s research includes the therapists that began physical play treatment for SPD, which is well documented. Over the past week, I have been working on more research towards my topic. I believe it is very important to have a variety of sources to choose from when it comes to the actual information that you incorporate into the final project. Finding multiple sources relating to my topic will allow me to have many different perspectives to present, and it will help eliminate as much bias as possible in my research. Also, I will be asking my current mentor more detailed questions towards my topic in either interview or survey form. My mentor’s input into the information that will be presented during my final project will be very beneficial as it will include information generalized from my current population of patients, and it will also allow me to fill gaps of information that I have not found thus far in my research.
Borkowska, A. (2017). Sensory Processing Disorders -- Diagnostic and Therapeutic Controversies
Current Issues in Personality Psychology, 5(3), 196-205. Retrieved January 28, 2018. The main topic of this article is the controversy of sensory integration dysfunction/ sensory processing disorder. The article begins by giving some background information about the therapies that have been used to treat sensory integration disorders. The author states that for the past couple of decades, there has been a significant increase in the popularity of diagnosing sensory integration with SI therapies. The article also presents the current state of knowledge with the the presence of “symptoms and diagnosis of sensory integration disorder, the neural bases of the disorder symptoms, comorbidity with other neurodevelopmental disorders, and the effectiveness of SI therapy” (Borkowska, 2017). The two quotes that I found within the article that I can paraphrase and use for my research are “Sensory processing is the organisation and interpretation of sensory stimuli coming from the body and the environment, and symptoms of atypical sensory processing manifest themselves in inappropriate responses to sensory stimulation” and “One such neurophysiological indicator is the level of sensory gating, which is a natural brain reaction suppressing signals which are redundant or unimportant and selectively directing one’s own sensitivity to sensory stimuli.” (Borkowska, 2017). This source deems to be credible because the author of the source is a psychological researcher, and the source was published in a journal, the Current Issues in Personality Psychology. Also, the journal was published in 2017, which means that the information within the journal is still relevant to this population and time period. Within this source, I found that there were many different perspectives addressed when referring to the journey of having sensory processing disorder. For example, the source noted that sensory processing disorder has effects on the child with the condition, the parents, the therapists/doctors of the child, and the teachers and coaches. Implementing all of these different perspectives into my research will allow the information to relate to a larger population, which will ultimately let me generalize my research to more individuals. Annotated Bibliography Graphic Organizer
Source #__2__ Bibliography (MLA or APA) Borkowska, A. (2017). Sensory Processing Disorders -- Diagnostic and Therapeutic Controversies. Current Issues in Personality Psychology, 5(3), 196-205. Retrieved January 28, 2018. Reflection: Within this source, I found that there were many different perspectives addressed when referring to the journey of having sensory processing disorder. For example, the source noted that sensory processing disorder has effects on the child with the condition, the parents, the therapists/doctors of the child, and the teachers and coaches. Implementing all of these different perspectives into my research will allow the information to relate to a larger population, which will ultimately let me generalize my research to more individuals. Annotation: The main topic of this article is the controversy of sensory integration dysfunction/ sensory processing disorder. The article begins by giving some background information about the therapies that have been used to treat sensory integration disorders. The author states that for the past couple of decades, there has been a significant increase in the popularity of diagnosing sensory integration with SI therapies. The article also presents the current state of knowledge with the the presence of “symptoms and diagnosis of sensory integration disorder, the neural bases of the disorder symptoms, comorbidity with other neurodevelopmental disorders, and the effectiveness of SI therapy” (Borkowska, 2017). Potential Quotes: “Sensory processing is the organisation and interpretation of sensory stimuli coming from the body and the environment, and symptoms of atypical sensory processing manifest themselves in inappropriate responses to sensory stimulation.” “One such neurophysiological indicator is the level of sensory gating, which is a natural brain reaction suppressing signals which are redundant or unimportant and selectively directing one’s own sensitivity to sensory stimuli.” Assessment: This source deems to be credible because the author of the source is a psychological researcher, and the source was published in a journal, the Current Issues in Personality Psychology. Also, the journal was published in 2017, which means that the information within the journal is still relevant to this population and time period. I am researching sensory processing disorder because I have taken a special interest in this topic since I began interning at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta this year. Since working in Occupational Therapy, I have observed how continued therapies have helped patients with small skills such as eating, anger management, playtime skills, and concentration on schoolwork. My current essential question is: How can the treatment plans for patients with sensory processing disorder (SPD), provided by the Occupational Therapists at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, benefit the everyday lives of these children? I think that the best tools that I envision to support my project will be a website that I will create, and perhaps a brochure or table chart display with different elements of treatment planning shown. For my real inquiry, I will conduct interviews with all of the Occupational Therapists at my Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta branch, and I think I am going to ask the Clinic Manager if I can have a survey sent to the Occupational Therapists throughout the CHOA system. Based on the information gathered, I will compare treatment planning notes and make inferences based on the data gathered.
What type of education did you need to become an occupational therapist?
Presentation Link: https://www.emaze.com/@AOOZQITRO/blank
Works Cited Link: https://docs.google.com/a/forsythk12.org/document/d/1ch-Q_TRh6vah6GiDQ3cN823ayTarmb0eRMLpZKNHf9Y/edit?usp=sharing |
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