“The Adaptive Zippering Board”
The
media project was one of my favorite assignments of occupational therapy school
to date. This project gave me the freedom to really use my developing OT brain
to create an intervention for a client in need. One of the most significant
things I learned from this assignment is that it is not always easy tailoring
an intervention to someone with a specific diagnosis. Before I decided to
create the Adaptive Zippering Board, I had several other ideas using zip ties
that I thought would be great, but none of those were applicable to my client
and the things that he found meaningful. One of the major pillars in
occupational therapy is client-centeredness, so it is imperative as an OT to
make sure that the interventions I assign to the client are functional and
relative to the client’s wants and needs.
Although
my client is fictional, I feel like I really grasped and mastered the purpose
of the “just-right challenge” through my innovation. The Adaptive Zippering
Board and the adaptive clothing I have provided allows three different grades
of the intervention that could be tailored to my client as he improves in
therapy. For example, at his lowest level of functionality, my client should
complete the adaptive zippering board using the zippers with the zip ties. As
that task becomes easy for him to complete, he can move on to using the zippers
on the Adaptive Zippering Board that do not have the zip ties. After this has
been mastered, my client can put on the clothing with adaptive zip ties zippers
and practice his dressing. Once this is done, the client can begin working on
dressing independently with no adaptations. This project definitely challenged
my creativity - both artistically in the way I designed my board and mentally
as I thought of the perfect intervention for my client using the medium I was
assigned.
This
assignment has impacted me by giving me incredible insight as to what my future
as an OT will look like. I will be using my creativity to create and implement
interventions that are meaningful to my client in order to help them get back
to the activities they like to do in their everyday life. Projects like this
make me fall more in love with the profession of occupational therapy and increase
my confidence that OT is the perfect fit
for me.
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