Katlyn Dupree's Blog

Before beginning OT school I got some of my observation hours at a pediatric clinic in Memphis. I really enjoyed my time here, and I felt like I got to learn a lot from my observation. This was one of the first places I got the opportunity to shadow, so at this point my knowledge of OT was minimal. Something happened on one of the days I was shadowing that left me feeling very uncomfortable. The OT practitioner left me alone with a client who was around 8 years old, who was on the autism spectrum. The child wasn’t verbal and didn’t take instruction very well. The OT practitioner told me when he left the room to make sure the child stayed in his seat while he was gone. So of course the first thing the child does when the OT left the room was get out of his seat, and he tried to leave the therapy room we were in. I had no clue what or how to keep him in his seat, and all of this made me fell really uncomfortable. Now that I know the responsibilities of OTs, OTAs, and aids, I have realize

For knowledge check #14, I will be discussing things that I learned through the learning activities professor Lancaster provided for us.  I really enjoyed the TED Talk about “Why We Need Universal Design.” This message coming from a man who is deaf made the topic even more meaningful to me. He was speaking through experience. I like how he pointed out that we all have disabilities, whether they are temporary or not. At some point or another we all have to adapt. Universal Design, though, is creating something that everyone can use without need for adaptations. What amazing world it would be if everything could be universally designed. The podcast episode I chose to watch was Cancer Related Cognitive-Dysfunciton. This episode was really interesting to me. It seems weird to me that this disability is sometimes disregarded. They talked about how this symptom of cancer or cancer treatments normally isn’t expressed to the cancer patient, so they normally aren’t expecting this to occur. I