Student Stuffs Giveaway!

Life as a student... sometimes fun, sometimes stressful, sometimes unbelievable. And for one person, it's about to be unbelievably lucky!!


I like students. I like them to know that life gets better when you are being paid to work instead of paying for work experience. I like to occasionally pick on students IRL but avoid it online since my wit just doesn't translate well to type. But seriously, being an OT student can be great, since it means that you're almost an OT or OTA (which we all know is terrific)! So students need a little something special

I'm sending some of my gently used and most useful study materials. This includes a Quick Reference Dictionary for Occupational Therapy, spiffy laminated cards on multiple topics (anatomy, TBI, SCI, low vision, neuro...), and hard to find guidelines on safety for patients in acute care.

The Pencil Grip is a company that makes more than just grips, and they have sent another useful item for students. They make dry erase file folder labels, which I think would be infinitely useful when you're changing classes each semester and gaining new knowledge to be organized by the minute.

Remember that AOTA is always your best resource no matter your practice area. They have sent items to promote and explain OT, including 2 T-shirts, brand posters, and pens. For your everyday life, they've included a great tote bag, umbrella, and car decal that I'm sure will have great usefulness no matter your job site.

Included are some Dycem sample sheets, which will be handy when on fieldwork or trying to construct new adaptive devices. Also is a nifty NBCOT lunch box and pin for the Open Journal of Occupational Therapy, to remind you of helpful organizations in your post-student world.

If you're an OT or OTA student (even a very committed pre-OT student), enter now by leaving a comment below. Comments must be received before 11:59pm EST on January 31. Good Luck!

Pediatric Playthings Giveaway!

I never would have imagined when starting school, or even ending school, that I would someday consider myself a primarily pediatric practitioner. But it has largely become my OT identity and something that I really enjoy. Now I get to share some great pediatric related items with you!
The friendly folks at Maddak have been very generous in providing many items for all the giveaways. I have always liked Maddak because they provide a lot of unique tools that are very useful and they really respect the therapy professionals that use their tools. I love the awards they give out at the AOTA annual conference for therapist and student inventions that fill a new need, and now they have started a special "OT Circle" for therapists to provide feedback on their products.

Pediatric practitioners should get a lot of use out of a large roll of Tenura non-slip. Great for keeping games and materials from sliding off desks and slant boards, adapting toys for easier holding, and sometimes making it easier for little bottoms to stay in their chairs!

The Pencil Grip company makes more than just grips, but they have included standard, jumbo, and crossover grips for you to try. Their standard grip is my favorite for kiddos (and myself) and the jumbo version takes those teeny tiny hard to grip pens and makes them into comfortable arthritis-friendly writing tools. I haven't gotten a chance to try the crossover grip but the quality is quite nice. They have also donated some terrific Tri-Write crayons, which I love to use for the little ones who are just starting to color.

In the "intangibles" file is a great gift from Tactus Therapy. They will be donating a free download of their Visual Attention TherAppy app, a great tool for therapists working on cognition, attention, and scanning. This can be used on any iOS device, I'm anxiously awaiting their android versions.

There are two of the best blog resources for pediatric practitioners that I want to highlight. Karen blogs her school OT adventures at Miss Awesomeness and always comes up with terrific ideas for working with kiddos. I'm passing along some of her great tools for developing fine and visual motor skills- it's a great party pack to start or freshen your OT kit. She also developed the fun and exciting Lava Paper in conjunction with Tonya from Therapy Fun Zone. Tonya has started highlighting activities each week that therapists submit, so I'd definitely encourage you to check that out and stay fresh.

Remember that AOTA is always your best resource no matter your practice area. They have sent items to promote OT in your clinic, including a T-shirt, brand posters, and pens. For your everyday life, they've include a great tote bag, umbrella, and car decal that I'm sure will have great usefulness no matter your job site.

This pack also has some of my own personal items that I've used and enjoyed and pass along to you. This includes small travel versions of Spot It, Cranium, and Puzzominos. I've also thrown in a super toy for working on motor planning- the Astrojax.

I serendipitously found golf-sized colored pencils and my most favorite writing implements (for personal and professional use) the Bic Grips Mini. There are also a few extra sensory and learning surprises thrown in (including bubble wrap!!).

If you're a practitioner in this area, enter now by leaving a comment below. Comments must be received before 11:59pm EST on January 31. Good Luck!

Geriatric Grab-bag Giveaway!

Happy Blogiversary to me! I've spent a fair amount of time the past five years working with geriatric patients and adult phys/dys in general. Here are some awesome tools that will augment your outpatient, SNF, ALF, inpatient rehab, or hospital based practice!


The great folks at Maddak have been very generous in providing many items for this giveaway. I have always liked Maddak because they provide a lot of unique tools that are very useful and they really respect the therapy professionals that use their tools. I love the awards they give out at the AOTA annual conference for therapist and student inventions that fill a new need, and now they have started a special "OT Circle" for therapists to provide feedback on their products.

A hip kit is one of the essentially useful items that Maddak has provided for the giveaway. No matter where you work, there's always the day that you run out of reachers. The kit contains a reacher, sock aid, shoe horn, and long handled sponge. Also included is one of my favorite items- a leg lifter! So useful especially in those days immediately following a surgery. I've found that a leg lifter can also be very helpful in performing safe tub transfers when leg mobility is still limited.

Two more super useful items from Maddak are included in this package. A Tenura jar opener is better shaped than the typical flat openers and specially shaped for bottles and jars. I have difficulty opening items and know from experience these are beyond helpful. A pack of tubing to build up handles, pens, and utensils is also a great tool in the phys/dys world for so many uses.

The Pencil Grip company makes more than just grips, but they have included jumbo grips for our giveaway to assist those with arthritis. Their standard grip is my favorite for kiddos (and myself) and the jumbo version takes those teeny tiny hard to grip pens and makes them into comfortable arthritis-friendly writing tools.

My favorite car transfer tool is also part of the giveaway. The Handybar has been such a great help to my grandmother for getting in and out of the car. This tool is compatible in any car and provides a stable bar to push from and balance on while trying to get in and out of the car. It's also compact enough that it easily fits in a purse or the door console. This is such a great tool, and I love promoting mobility throughout the lifespan.

In the "intangibles" file is a great gift from Tactus Therapy. They will be donating a free download of their Spaced Retrieval TherAppy app, a great tool for therapists working in cognition. I think this would be really relevant to therapists in community based settings with high level clients, but their site also says it can be used with lower level clients. This can be used on any iOS device, I'm anxiously awaiting their android versions.

From my collection of OT stuff, I have included a faucet nozzle light. This light is supposed to change the color of the water whether it is hot or cold and I thought would be very helpful for clients with diabetes or other sensation impairments. I haven't been able to try it out but hope that it works as advertised! Also included is a Twist 'n Write pencil, what we called a rocketship pencil in the school system. This is another item that is very arthritis-friendly and can be useful even if you have limited finger control.

Last, but certainly not least, remember that AOTA is always your best resource no matter your practice area. They have sent items to promote OT in your clinic, including a T-shirt, brand posters, and pens. For your everyday life, they've include a great tote bag and umbrella that I'm sure will have great usefulness no matter your job site.

WOOOOOO! that's our geriatric tool giveaway! If you're a practitioner in this area, enter now by leaving a comment below. Comments must be received before 11:59pm EST on January 31. Good Luck!

#10minTues - Giveaway Rules

Lots and lots and lots going on right now. Start my new job for realz today and still managing a large EI caseload. Put together a baby registry, which didn't seem quite as bad as the wedding one. Tons of thoughts going through my head but getting the giveaways started with some rules will fit within our 10 minute time frame.

Cheryl's Blogiversary Giveaway Rules!

There are 3 separate giveaways, and all will operate with these rules.

Each giveaway will have its own post clearly labeling it. There will be a giveaway for students, practitioners in geriatrics, and practitioners in pediatrics. It is requested that you only enter a giveaway which is relevant to you and your practice area so that the items will be useful to you and your clients. You may enter multiple giveaways if you have multiple practice areas, or if you are a student in your final year getting ready to go into a specific field.

To enter the giveaway, all you need to do is leave a comment on the respective post. Please only leave one comment. You will still need to login with an account (google accounts preferred). I should be able to email folks with a google account directly, but otherwise please leave some kind of contact information (twitter handle or email AT service DOTCOM). Comments will still be moderated, and while you may feel free to plug your OT blog or related website, advertisements for fake universities or other spam will be unceremoniously deleted and not counted.

All entries must be received to my inbox by 11:59pm EST on January 31. From those entries, a random number generator will be used to select the winner for each giveaway. Winners' names/handles will be posted in a new post and messaged directly based on contact information in their comment. Winners have 1 week from that posting to acknowledge their win and provide a mailing address within the contiguous United States for their box to be mailed. Winners who do not respond within a week will void their prize and a new winner will be selected.

Prizes are awesome and should be enjoyed if you accurately enter one relevant to your practice area. It would be great if you can take a (HIPAA compliant) photo of items in action or write a blog post about their usefulness. Prizes have been donated by great OT related organizations (or purchased by me) and I will acknowledge these companies' generosity in the post, but opinions are my own- I asked for things that I already use and like.

Feel free to comment on this post, but it's not an entry! Look for specific geriatric, pediatric, and student entries later this week!

A very NEW NEW NEW year

I won't say "New year, new me" but there are a lot of changes taking place in my life.

Job changes are so ever present in this blog. If you are a student, you should be comforted by the fact that there truly are SO many options for OTs, it's often true that you can work as much as you want. The only downside of this right now is that I am dreading tax time with 4 (I think?) W-2s and a 1099 with small business deductions... it's enough to make you hyperventilate. At any rate- my early intervention work is something that I really enjoy. I have families that I am close to, coordinators that respect my evals and opinions, and a burgeoning caseload. It has taken 6 months (and the willingness to be very flexible) but the business has grown well. I still have my occasional hospital days, where it is nice to switch up and work with adults (particularly neuro cases) but I mostly enjoy visiting with my friends. But now, I will have the option to cut back on both as I want to with the onset of a new job.

I will be starting (very very soon!) at an outpatient pediatric facility 2 days a week. I had seen the job posting on AOTA's OTJoblink (what is this, the third job I've taken from there?) but was still debating about applying when I was contacted directly from site about my interest and asked to interview. I didn't expect them to be able to provide regular hours at a rate that would offset losses without some kind of crazy demand to drive to multiple locations or covering other types of outpatients, but they well exceeded my expectations. I look forward to getting started there and am really pleased to find a pediatric practice even in my small town area.

The reduced schedule will help me maintain some of my other OT activities and provide time to rest. I've also been spoiled pretty much since my first job- if you don't work 5 days every week it's a lot easier to make doctor appointments, get your errands done, and keep from being overrun with laundry. Again, students! You can work as much as you want to- 0-7 days/week. I've said before that after our move, though I miss some features of Baltimore, that life was largely falling into place for my husband and I with the exception of my job. Hopefully this will be the last moving piece for awhile and things will be settled nicely.

I
didrocked my sprint triathlon last year and really enjoyed it! I had wanted to work up to an Olympic distance for the fall or summer of 2013 by the latest, and hoped to work to running a half marathon by this coming August. Now I've had to reset those goals and think about working back up to a 5K by this fall. I had also hoped to get a Girl Scout troop started at my church but the girls' interest was intermittent at best and I truthfully didn't want to be doing a lot of work when people didn't really want to be there. I still have a Sunday morning class but I'm getting ready to step back from that as well- I'm starting to feel a lot more effective with toddlers than teens.

My involvement with OT extracurriculars is changing too. I anticipate this will be my last year as the VP of Advocacy for the state OT association (provided I can induce someone into running for the position). I expect that I will still be involved in the bill review committee or other events, but I won't be the go-to person anymore. There aren't a terrible number of responsibilities and things to do with that job, but when they need done, they need done NOW. I had to step back from my NBCOT work this year, which is sad because it is a great group of intelligent people and work that I really enjoy (not to mention nice trips that are very fun also!). I plan to reapply as a volunteer in the future, but I will be missing my SQDC peeps. Possibly worst of all, though I love my AOTA presentation group like a little OT family, I will not be able to accompany them as their continued tour of awesomeness hits San Diego this spring. I will be very sad to miss seeing these great people who are spread both cross-country and internationally- and some of the #OTalk2US #OTalk and #occhat crew that are visiting from abroad.

(Before you get too teary on my behalf, remember that with all ebb there must be a flow, and that I just am not good at telling news sometimes so I put it all in a crazy order)

This is a lot of life changes all at once, and though they were planned in various degrees, it's all to accommodate the change that you can't really possibly plan enough for. I'm having a baby! He's coming (ready or not) this spring and the one thing I'm sure of is that no amount of preparation is really going to cover it. There's awe and anxiety and excitement and attempts to not get overwhelmed... and a lot of naps. Change is coming to my life in ways I know I cannot even begin to anticipate. But I think it will be worth it.

Lest you worry, faithful reader, I will be keeping the blog. It is fun for me and so while there may not be copious posts (when have there ever been?), there will be posts. There may be baby related posts... it is what it is. This month I am celebrating my 5 year blogiversary, doing my first big giant giveaways (they are AWESOME!) and hope to clean out my drafts list one way or another. I still tweet more than I write fully because it's been hard for me to carve out writing time with some of the other demands of life (5 eval calls in a week, hello) and if you want a (more) prompt response then you should tweet at @OTnotes.

Hope that you are having a wonderful, healthy, happy new year as well! Who can really say what it will bring, but I'm certainly looking through rosey glasses right now.

Happy Blogiversary!

Hooray! It's my 5 year Blogiversary- 5 consecutive years of OT-specific bloggings! I think milestones are fun, even when they are self-created and goofy. So I am celebrating this full out. I had blogs and journals before, but this is really the longest I've ever kept writing with a single purpose.

To celebrate, this month will be special in a few ways. The first will be compiling what I consider (in o-so-humble terms) The Greatest Hits entries. This will come with a special post and will have a permanent page on top of the screen. I'll be putting in the posts that get the most visits, as well as those that I think have really good writing or info but were not well read. I think it's kind of ridiculous that I spent untold hours researching and rewriting the entry on serial casting efficacy, but got far more views about a 15 minute write-up of how Glee should have cast an actor that actually uses a wheelchair. That's the way it goes! If you remember something that you think was good enough to be included in this list, please comment and let me know.

Second, and likely far more interesting to most readers, I am having my first ever giant giveawayS. Not one, not two, but three mega-awesome boxes of joy are ready to be shipped to lucky winners. Sitting across from me in my living room are the three boxes of greatness, divided into Geriatric, Pediatric, and Student specific items. Why three diverse boxes? Because I am a diverse person. Each box contains some of my favorite things for the different population. I have worked with both geriatric and pediatric clients and thanks to generosity from some great companies, was able to get many of my favorite items donated. Also, not to brag, but I was a pretty good student. I love getting comments from students and started this blog as a way to pay forward to the next generation of OTs. So there will be some great things in that box too.

Third, I am delivering BIG NEWS. This is actually coming first, so be on the lookout! (I actually wrote it an hour or so ago but it's in the holding pen)

There should be some normalish entries coming too. I have a goal to clear out my started drafts and "write about this" list in the next 2 months. They won't all be classics, but it should be the normal OT ramblings that you're used to. Do have some patience for me, my EI caseload went KABOOM right before Christmas so I have tons of evals to write up, people to schedule, and paperwork to complete.

I thought about having a poll, but to some extent I have so many ideas that it seems bad to solicit more, especially knowing that I don't always get to everything. I will be trying to update the blog and link lists too, I'm afraid some of those may be woefully outdated. So please enjoy this January with me- it could be legendary!