Remaining Independent in your Home

Occupational therapists treat the entire person. Much like your primary care physician, we were required to learn elements of the entire body so that we could treat holistically (a one stop shop). Because of this, your outpatient rehabilitation specialist will perform an evaluation that assesses the following things: 

• Personal history
  • Who are you? What do you do? What makes you tick? Why are you seeking outpatient therapy?
• Physical function (upper body and lower body)
  • Strength, range of motion, and flexibility 
• Neuromuscular function (brain to muscle communication)
  • Coordination, speed, agility, and reaction time 
• Cognitive and Mind health
  • Short term memory, recall, information processing, and perception of illness 
• Occupational Inventory (Activity and role inventory)
  • Roles you play like a caregiver, spouse, parent, employee, etc. 
  • Mobility inventory like the places you need to go 
  • IADL inventory and what activities are required for you to be independent 
  • Other activities that are important to you

Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs) are essential for independence in life roles and required for aging in place. There are 8 activities core activities for independence including cooking, cleaning, communication, taking and managing medication, handling your personal finances, transportation and community mobility, shopping

Cooking - The ability to follow a recipe and having the stamina to prepare a meal for yourself and/or your family

Cleaning -   The ability to perform light housekeeping including making your bed, doing your laundry, washing the dishes, taking out the trash, vacuuming, sweeping, cleaning your bathroom, etc. 

Communication - The ability to use the telephone, the computer, have conversations with people (familiar and strangers), communicate your needs clearly.

Taking medication - The ability to sort and organize your medication or determine a compensatory method to do so as well as taking the appropriate dosage at the appropriate time. 

Personal Finances - The ability to establish an organization method to understand financial responsibilities and pay your bills on time. 

Transportation - Whether you are driving, calling for a driving service like a taxi or Uber, or taking public education. You must have a defined action plan for community mobility and transportation.

Shopping - The ability to plan transportation, plan a grocery/clothing list of needs for yourself and your home, have the stamina to collect your items at the store, and be able to get them into your house. 

Your body is complex and should be working synergistically with all of its parts. When some muscles have become weaker while others remain strong, an imbalance occurs which causes decrease balance, standing tolerance, and joint stability. 

Fine motor skills are a fancy way of saying functional wrist, hand, and finger movement. Many people require fine motor training after a stroke, traumatic brain injury, hand injury, neuropathy, or throughout the progression of a progressive diagnosis. 

Fine motor skills include open thumb web space, bilateral coordination, thumb IP joint flexion, finger isolation, upper body stabilization, strength, and mobility, dexterity, prehension, intrinsic muscle strength, precision, motoric separation of the two sides of the hand, motor control, pincer grasp, pinch strength, grip strength, and the ability to grasp and release. 

We incorporate visual perceptual elements into many treatments to enhance perception, balance, safety, cognition, memory, recall and neural excitation. Some areas of visual perception include form constancy, visual discrimination, figure-ground perception, visual closure, visual memory, and visual sequential memory.