State Supervision Requirements for Occupational Therapists and OT Assistants

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The occupational therapy field in the United States has an amazing certification organization called the NBCOT - National Board for Certification in Occupational Therapy. I was on their website today because they are having a slogan contest, and I wanted to see if they had posted info on it there. While I was surfing their site, I came across some really great info I want to share with you. It will come in very handy if you have questions about supervision of OT assistants, especially in remote areas.

NBCOT has provided a one-stop reference to all the state practice acts regarding supervision, which is titled,

An Overview of State Regulatory Supervision Requirements for Occupational Therapy Assistants

It is available through the following link:

 http://www.nbcot.org/pdf/statutes_and_regulations.pdf

How helpful! Thank you, NBCOT!

PS - I copied today's  email about the slogan contest in case you did not receive it:

OTR/COTA Pride Slogan Contest Announcement:

Occupational therapists across the nation tell us how much they value their NBCOT certification and the value it creates for the profession.  We want to capture that value in a new slogan and invite you, our OTRs and COTAs, to share your ideas.  

The Contest

Submitting one or more slogan entries that capture the pride and value of being OTR/COTA certified by NBCOT in seven words or less! 

The Prizes

Grand Prize: A new Apple iPad 2 - 16 GB Wi-Fi model 

Second Prize: iPod Touch - 16 GB model 

Third & Forth Prize: iPod Shuffle

When

NBCOT will accept entries until September 6, 2013.  Winners will be announced October 30, 2013.  

How to Enter

Go to https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/OTRCOTAslogan to submit your slogan entry(s). 

Official Rules

All entries will become the property of the National Board for Certification in Occupational Therapy.  No purchase is necessary to participate.  Contestants must be 18 or older.  The contest runs between August 20, 2013 and September 6, 2013. Winning entries will be selected by a panel of judges and winners will be notified by email.  Winners will be required to sign a release and affidavit of eligibility.  Odds are determined by the number of entries.  The approximate retail price of the prizes does not exceed $5,000.  Void where prohibited by law

Medical Care Hermano Pedro Hospital Style

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I need to update you on my activities!

For the first time in my travel career, I left an assignment early.

I wrote a separate blog about it, but I want to reiterate to you if you feel a sick knot in your gut about what you see in a building, call your recruiter and your clinical liaison immediately and tell him or her what you see. It is vital to start the process of communication between the two companies. My recruiter told me, "Tre, you have never complained in the years we have been working together, so I know something is not right."  Within a week or so, the travel PT and I were released on the same day. Until then, I dotted every "i" and crossed every "t."

Thank God!

Within a week of leaving this job, I was on a plane headed to Antigua, Guatemala. These transitions can be blessings in disguise!



Plaza Mayor, Antigua, Guatemala
 

I had the good fortune to complete two weeks of Spanish as a Second Language training and medical Spanish at Christian Spanish Academy  (CSA), which I highly recommend! My studies, which concluded yesterday, included five hours of 1:1 instruction with my teacher daily and about two hours of homework each night. I developed a list of many questions/cues I use during evaluations and treatment, got them translated (look for these on another blog article soon) and learned the parts of the body. I would actually recommend four hours of training a day because the fifth hour is really fatiguing!

Me and mi maestra, Cristina

Last week, I had the wonderful opportunity to tour Hermano Pedro Hospital as an extracurricular activity through  CSA. It is located at 6a Calle Oriente #20, between 3a and 4a Avenida Sur in Antigua.

 

I was so touched by what I saw that I immediately asked about volunteering. By the way, there are a few requirements to volunteer at Hermano Pedro, just so you know.

REQUIREMENTS TO VOLUNTEER:

1) Take the tour, which is offered Tuesday/Thursday afternoon at 3pm
2) Provide two passport size photos of yourself for your ID
3) Complete an application to volunteer


Beautiful inside and out

4) If you are a licensed medical professional, you must submit a copy of your license.

Hermano Pedro Hospital houses almost 250 people from babies to ancianos (older people), most of whom have been abandoned, have severe physical or cognitive disabilities or who have outlived their relatives. The hospital has separate living areas for male and female adults and children.

What was amazing me to was the amount of great patient-specific equipment there due to donations from different groups in the US, especially the Knights of Columbia Wheelchair Foundation. Bravo, Knights! The wheelchairs below were donated by the K of C. I didn't get a chance to take a photo of the real specialty wheelchairs - the ones you fit during a seating clinic. There were more than I could count.

The wheelchairs I saw at this hospital that is run solely on donations were on average better than the wheelchairs I see in for-profit facilities in the United States.

 What does this say

about our for-profit skilled nursing facilities?

Just a thought.

I spent most of my time with the adults because that is what I do in the States. The women were housed in long dorm rooms with about 14 beds per room. Their beds were positioned so that each woman was just out of reach of being able to touch another. Their clothing was neatly folded on tall open shelves at the end of the room.

As I spoke with each of these women, I found that every one of them had one thing in common. They had no family. They were SOLA. My heart went out to each of them. In fact, I saw this picture on facebook yesterday, and it made me think of them:


So. I knew that the way of the Guatemalan therapists would be

different than the US. I wanted to integrate into their system. I was not there to teach them all I know. I wanted it to be the opposite. I was assigned to the PT gym for the adults. I never met the three OTs. I was told they did fine motor coordination activities and that they mostly worked with the kids. (I did meet a group of six OT/PT/ST students from University of Texas-El Paso on the street on my way to school and later in the pediatric area working on specialty wheelchairs.)

Let's strip away everything we know about the US rehab system:

• efficiency
• documentation/paperwork/charts
• Medicare guidelines.

Hmmmm. What a change.

They weren't watching the clocks nonstop. They weren't pecking out documentation on a computer or writing in a soft chart. They weren't coding billing. They simply focused on treating patients.

They didn't have a standard mat to do matwork. They treated people on plinth tables. They didn't use gait belts to get them up on the tables, either. They hoisted them up onto the plinths.

Most of the ancianos I saw did not have knee contractures. They had pain and stiffness, but not contractures. "Why?", you may ask...

 ...I have to believe it is because of the way they begin every session. They begin every session with a 15 minute footrub.

LOVE it. It completely confirms what I learned in a reflexology CEU that the body can respond beautifully to treatment in other areas than where we normally see the symptoms.

 

The PT, Amanda, really surprised me when she had her 80+ year-old patients roll from supine to prone on the plinth and then do modified push ups for arm strengthening. Wow.

They did not have a plethora of therapy equipment other than their hands to do their treatments. If we want to get down to basics, let's acknowledge that the best tools we have are our hands and minds that can critically and clinically reason.

They do not have restorative aides to do range of motion (ROM) on their residents (which is especially needed for their adolescents with cerebral palsy). I spent one afternoon with Amanda in the adolescent unit doing Neuromuscular Re-education and passive range of motion (PROM), which was an entirely different world than the older ladies. These young ladies are mostly bedbound, nonverbal and locked in their own worlds. They need daily work, but there is just not enough staff to provide it.

The therapists had a lovely connection with their patients. They were respectful, playful and caring. By the time I left, I felt as if I was saying goodbye to a family.

My week at Hermano Pedro is simply a drop in the bucket of what I would know about the place if I stayed longer. I'm sure I'll learn more when I return next year. If any of you have visited or volunteered there, please drop me a line and tell me about your experience. It's an amazing place with a grand mission of service.

A tip:  If you are in Antigua and you wish to volunteer your OT or PT services, ask to work with the adolescents. They are the ones with severe contracture formation and appear to be a semi-forgotten population.

A request: if you work in a building that has a bunch of old Neuroflex-style splints laying in the closet or in storage under the mats, would you do me a favor? Ask your manager if you might donate a few of them to Hermano Pedro. Email me and I can get them sent to Amanda. They really need splints!

How to Manage A Toxic Assignment

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It's been a smooth ride since my first travel assignment in August 2009. I'm happy to reminisce on great work environments, coworkers who have become dear friends since then, and interesting places I've been...it's been so very life changing!

Last month, I moved from California to Washington. I absolutely love Washington, and I know I would like to stay for a while to explore such a diverse place. It provides a perfect landscape for my love of hiking, biking and living near water and mountains.

My first Washington assignment, though, was less than stellar.

I was in a building that looked beautiful, had the largest and most well stocked rehab gym I've been in for years, and happened to be

I'll explain why...

SNFs (skilled nursing facilities) are not always what they look like. I've been in some that look shabby but that provide the finest care around.

This SNF was in stop placement.

That means they were not allowed to admit any new patients,

which happens when a building is in trouble with the state.

In my first six work days at the new place, I was tested on abuse/neglect, attended an in-service on abuse/neglect, and an employee from a sister facility went around the building quizzing employees how to answer state surveyor questions about....

you got it...

abuse and neglect.

Do you?

 

What the heck happened there?

 

I never sat down and read the results of their latest survey. Within two days, I was working with my recruiter and clinical liaison to get out of the contract. It was difficult to find more than a handful of people who had worked here longer than a month or two. Really, in 17 years, I had never seen anything like it.

 

This was one of those times I was glad that I was not a new grad traveler, which would be absolutely frightening. I can't go into further details except to say that this was one of those places in which I was seeing situations that make me uneasy...I didn't see abuse or neglect, but I just wasn't seeing the level of commitment to caring for others that I have experienced in past assignments.  In addition, the rehab director was not only absent, she was...clueless. I hate to say it, but again....I have never seen anything like it.

 

Today's blog is about recommendations for how to handle a toxic assignment. This is not how I function on a daily basis. Usually, it is so very easy to provide great therapy and to communicate with a healthy, proactive nursing and social work team. This advice is for dysfunctional buildings.

 

 Rule #1: CYA
Hyper-vigilance is sometimes called for. Be aware of every word you say.

Do not offer any information other than what is asked of you. Cross every "t" and dot every "i." Document everything you notice about your patient, especially any new bruising, behaviors, or conditions. For example, I found the same patient soaking wet every mid-morning for several days. Unsurprisingly, she also had a UTI - and so did several others on her hallway.

 

Rule #2: Explain
Explain what you plan to do with every patient/resident prior to treating. In some cases, you may need to explain to someone else, like a family member or a state surveyor who is watching or questioning you.

 

Educate other staff members, nurse aides or nurses and document your education sessions. (You should be doing this anyway!)

 

Rule #3: Know "best practice"

If you are asked to evaluate a patient and there is no skilled documented in the chart to justify the referral, educate the nursing staff about what documentation you need. Communicate with the Director of Rehab that the referral lacks clinical justification. A screen from rehab does not justify treatment. It looks simply like a self referral. The DOR in this troubled building actually stated to me that "a screen form from the PT justifies evaluation" with no other documentation in the chart to support the referral. The poor PT was new to practice in the United States and was unaware of best practices.

 

 

Poor thing, she was not going to be educated properly with this manager.

 

WHEW!

 

Rule #4:  Identify a support system
If your manager is not physically there to support you and your team, seek support with the members of the team and identify the strong players on the team or people who know the history of the building, the staff and the residents.  

 

Rule #5: Communicate with team members
If there is no rehab department leadership or regular rehab meeting to coordinate patient discussion between the therapies, initiate a time with the other therapists to do proper discharge planning.   

 

Rule #6: Know what you're dealing with in the building
Get a copy of the HCFA 802 from the MDS coordinator

so you can see who the building has identified with which Quality Indicators, which may include pain, pressure sores, UTIs, falls, behaviors, declines in ADLs or ROM, swallow, or weight loss.
HCFA 802 (example to the right)



Rule #7: Follow your gut
 If you have a queasy feeling in your stomach about working in the building, start making a list about the things that make you uneasy. Call your recruiter - and talk with the clinical liaison from your company. Don't cry wolf over small things. Make sure your concerns are founded on valid concerns.

yep

 

In my case, the travel PT and I called the clinical liaison together. We also left the contract on the same day, which happened to occur the day the state walked into the building.

We are all mandated reporters. The state was aware of our issues. They were already addressing them.

Rule #8: Don't be afraid or embarrassed to leave an assignment early if you know it's the right thing to do.

 



(read this 3-point article)

 

It should rarely happen. I am still surprised it happened after such a lovely flow of assignments. I am, however, relieved and ecstatic to be away from such a negative place.

 

I hope that you don't have this experience as a traveler.

If you do, don't hesitate to contact me.

Maybe I can help you through it.