Sharing Time!

Karen suggested that I share some of the handouts and treatment tools that I had worked on over the past year. I have been meaning to upload some handouts to some neutral site that would hold them nicely for others... haven't decided on the best method for this. Some text files could be posted to Google Documents, but it won't hold pdf files... OT Advantage also holds files but I'm unsure of a space restriction and it requires a (free) membership. Thoughts?

So, until I have a go-to site for file sharing, here are some of the other things on my list that don't require seeing the actual file. One thing that I did that was sorely needed by the clientele was creating Spanish handouts. I took Spanish, but I don't know enough to actually write it. But a 2-second internet search yields several sites that allow you to enter a paragraph or more of text and get an instant translation. So, I was able to translate several existing handouts in 10 minutes, which is very handy.

In a variation of a project I did for fieldwork, I collected a bunch of medicine bottles with various opening mechanisms for people to practice functional hand skills, and contained it nicely so that it could easily be taken to any room in the hospital. Another easy thing that I did during a slow day at work was to compile fine motor kits. We already had a handout and several existing supplies, but it just took time to do. Another activity that requires only time was cleaning out our supply closet. Just figuring out what we owned saved us money- we had 10 top quality walker bags just collecting dust!

Another easy project completed out of already existing materials was to create a pill sorting activity. We had dozens of colored beads in a small container and pill boxes (and also medicine bottles from my previous project). So I made a small chart with days of the week and the numbers and colors of beads for that day. It's a combined fine motor and cognitive activity. For a higher level client, I used a medication chart (made up by a pharm student) and correlated each real medication with a color of bead.

Something that I didn't put on my annual review sheet, but try to do, is just to fill in and be useful where needed. Paperwork, fixing things, doing the small tasks can have a positive impact on your coworkers. Sewing a button back on the Peabody kit during lunch got me a great review from the OT I job shadowed. The little things can make a big difference :)