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Nutrition & OT

Today in class we had a guest lecturer who spoke to us about nutrition and how OT's can be more involved. Nutrition is something that my OT's don't think about. Eating and feeding are within our scope of practice, but anything else to do with calorie consumption falls under the scope of a dietician. Essentially what we learned today was that when patients are in the hospital they are not getting enough calories/nutrients and so healing takes longer. This impacts therapy because without proper nutrition, patients are unable to do what we ask of them and do not make progress towards their goals.

There are several ways that an OT can provide a nutrition intervention for their client. Prior to starting OT school, I observed a feeding session at a pediatric outpatient facility. Kids blew bubbles to prepare to eat and then rolled the dice to see how many times they had to lick/smell a food and then rolled the dice again to see how many bites of a certain food they had to take before the session was over. This was called "Food School" and was a very fun activity to participate in. In addition to the child and the therapist participating in the activity, parents, siblings and the therapy dog at the facility were invited to join in. For adult clients a nutrition intervention could be helping them to prepare a nutritious meal and then invite a dietician to cover the finer details of nutrition. This could be done individually or in a small group setting.

At the end of the day proper nutrition is what enables us to participate in meaningful activities. While OT might not be the expert in the area of nutrition, we do have something valuable to bring to the table. By consulting a dietician on the proper nutrition needs of our clients, we can help them get back to their meaningful activities and live healthier lives.

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