The past few weeks, our class has been working hard on our literature reviews. For our topic, my group chose to focus on constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT) used in stroke patients. CIMT works by using straps or casts to reduce movement in the healthy area of the body so the patient is forced to use the weaken areas and strengthen them. We found that most OTs do not use this kind of therapy because it is not very well known. Most research shows that CIMT is very successful, but because OTs are not educated about it, it is not being utilized. According you to Ching-Yi and Chang, CIMT is  “one of the most empirically supported approaches to rehabilitation of the upper limbs after stroke” (2015). This particular source discussed how successful CIMT is in stroke patients and discussed how it could be used in the future. They suggest someday CIMT can be administered through technology and patients can use it in their home while communicating with a therapist over video or phone call. I think CIMT can change how OTs treat stroke patients and should be better incorporated into the OT education system.

Thanks!
Emily

Ching-Yi Wu, Ku-Chou Chang, Constraint-induced movement therapy translated into practice, The Lancet Neurology, Volume 14, Issue 9, September 2015, Pages 869-871, ISSN 1474-4422, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(15)00183-0.

Hello and welcome! This week I will be reviewing a couple other blogs about occupational therapy, including "Monica's OT Blog" by Monica Lee and "Blank's Blog" by Serena Blank.

In Monica's blog, she writes about the use of occupational therapy with children with special needs. She loves working with children, having started by volunteering at a local church, and hopes to continue this into her future career. In her most recent post, she talks about "cognitive functional" occupational therapy, also referred to as "Cog-Fun." This is mainly used with children with ADHD. The study Monica wrote about showed that Cog-Fun was a very successful type of therapy, and was taught to parents so they could help their own children at home. Monica writes, Based on the children's TOLDX scores, which were taken before and after the intervention, the Cog-Fun program showed significant improvement in the children." I am glad to see such a success that will improve the lives of children with ADHD. Check out her blog at http://monicasotblog.blogspot.com/!

Serena's blog is about OT and handwriting. I find this incredibly interesting because this is a topic I have never seen before, but has a ton of potential and is very important. Serena says, "I have noticed that young people have lost their chance of learning the craft of handwriting, due to a shift towards a technology-based society." This is something I never thought about before and I am glad Serena is writing about it. In her mist recent post, she discusses an article about handwriting in preschool-aged children. It talks about the "Handwriting Without Tears" test or HWT. This is when a child traces over the writing of the teacher with various writing tools to learn the fine motor skills. This was shown to be very successful! It is important to Serena that children are taught proper handwriting skills from a young age, and this should be important to teachers everywhere. Her blog ishttp://serenablank.blogspot.com/! Check it out!

I am thankful to have learned so much from these two blogs!
-Emily 

Lee, M. (2015, October). Success with Cognitive-Functional Occupational Therapy [Web log post].http://monicasotblog.blogspot.com/

Blank, S. (2015, October). Occupational Therapy Interventions and Handwriting [Web log post]http://serenablank.blogspot.com/