OT: Create - Motivate - Inspire

     For this neuro note, I am writing a reflection of my experience attending the Memphis Rolling Grizzlies' basketball practice. Our class was given the opportunity to sit in and watch their practice. While they are in their offseason, they scrimmaged for around two hours. After their practice was over, they brought out additional wheelchairs for us to get in and try out playing wheelchair basketball. I chose to write about this experience because I gained invaluable knowledge about adaptive sports and spinal cord injuries. One thing I took away from attending the practice was the value of social interaction with people who know what you are going through. I could tell that the team members were all very close and had really good relationships with each other, including the coach who was also in a wheelchair due to a spinal cord injury. It is important as a future practitioner to encourage our clients to remain socially active, especially with individual's who are in ...

     The media project was such a fun, interactive way to learn about adapting, creating, and being innovative through an OT lens! One thing that I learned from this assignment is that as a (future) occupational therapist, you sometimes have to be creative and think outside the box for your clients. For example, my client had challenges with certain ADLs, shopping, and opening food packages. While I could not think of a way to directly use straws to adapt these activities, I took a different perspective by looking at the performance skills required to complete these activities which made me think of fine motor skills, range of motion, and strength. I knew my client enjoyed decorating, so I was able to creatively use straws to improve the skills required to complete the activities she was struggling with while also being client-centered and occupation-based. After completing this project, I realized that OTs can be very resourceful by using everyday objects as adaptive e...