Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Transfatty Lives

Transfatty Lives is a documentary on Netflix made by DJ Transfatty, aka Patrick O'Brien, about his journey with ALS. O'Brien was diagnosed with ALS in 2005 at the age of 31 and decided to make an artistic documentary about his journey. The documentary starts with O'Brien's diagnosis, shows him starting a relationship and having a son, becoming depressed, moving into a nursing home, and moving into an ALS skilled facility. O'Brien opted to have a feeding tube placed and be put on a ventilator. He told the doctor placing the feeding tube that he wanted to be "an electric vegetable", meaning he wanted to live as long as possible. The documentary ends with O'Brien's family and friends saying that the reason O'Brien has lived so long is because he still has a goal to reach, a mission to accomplish. O'Brien has been battling ALS for 12 years. This is an extremely long time to be living with ALS, considering the average lifespan after diagnosis is...
Post a Comment
Read more

Expanding on Theory

The Neuro-Developmental Treatment Frame of Reference is a theory that is used to analyze and treat posture and movement impairments based on kinesiology, the study of human movement, and biomechanics, the study of forces and mechanical laws and their effects on movement in living organisms. It takes into account planes of movement, alignment, range of motion (the degrees of movement that a client has), muscle strength, base of support, postural control, weight shifts, and mobility when making a plan for intervention. The goal is to get the client to engage in meaningful occupations, which is done through assuming that posture and movement impairments are able to be changed. This theory can be used with children, adolescents, adults, and the elderly. According to this theory, to be functional means that the client would be able to engage in meaningful occupations. An occupational therapist would look at upper extremity movement, specifically: reaching, grasping, releasing objects, self ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Post Interview Review

How do you feel the interview went overall?  Overall I feel like the interview went pretty well. Of course there are questions that I wished I had answered differently, but overall I feel like it went well.  How did you prepare for the interview? I did a variety of things to prep for this interview. I read the articles that were provided by my professor prior to the interview. Most of them were really helpful and posed questions I had not thought about. Another thing I did to prepare was I thought back to the interview questions I had been asked during my interview for OT school and rehearsed my responses. I also researched cost of living in Memphis and CEU courses.  What went differently than you expected? The only thing that went differently than I expected was the types of questions I was asked. I feel like the questions I was asked were fairly basic and there were no questions that surprised me. I kinda wish I had been asked an off the wall question just to...
Post a Comment
Read more