April Challenge: make a new handout

How old are your patient/parent handouts? Were they written on a typewriter? Are they mimeographs? Do they have big black splotches from the year of the bad copier? It's time to upgrade!

Today's challenge is to make a new patient/parent handout. It's possible that nothing has changed in the whole world and all the information on your handout is still relevant. But you've probably been to courses and gotten new insights into things, your surgeons have been upgrading their techniques, adaptive equipment has changed in price and new research has changed the treatment protocol. So pick one handout and try to give it a makeover.

Your "makeover" might include printing on letterhead, adding graphics or pictures, or checking to make sure that the reading level is one that will be accessible to your clients. A 6th grade reading level was recommended when I was in school, MS Word has a tool for this and there are online scripts to check as well. Another update you might perform could be making copies of your handouts in Spanish (this will probably need to be run by an office in the facility to check for accuracy).

There are great Fact Sheets on OT provided free by AOTA which cover a multitude of settings and case populations. I liked to give these out in the clinic when people came in for an evaluation so that they would have a good idea of what to expect. Super Duper Publications also has a great number of handouts for those that work in pediatrics.

If you create a great handout, consider sharing it through an OT forum or online through Google Docs. Here's a link to my Homemade Adaptive Equipment handout with computer translated Spanish, and a link to my Heavy Work handout. Leave a comment if you have something to share!