Neuro Recovery After Stroke

Earn 1 hour of continuing education by joining OT Potential after taking this course.

Course Description

Are you fully using the critical window of opportunity after stroke to support neuro-recovery during your OT sessions—or are you unintentionally devoting valuable rehab time to compensation?

In today’s episode, we’re joined by Henry Hoffman to explore why prioritizing recovery—when possible—matters, and how occupational therapy professionals can more intentionally drive neuroplastic change after stroke.

Together, we break down core principles that support recovery-oriented practice, including:

➡️ Motor learning over compensation
➡️ High-repetition, task-specific practice
➡️ Sensory-rich feedback to shape movement

We also unpack emerging neuroscience from the past few years that supports this approach—and translate it into real-world practice. You’ll hear practical examples of what these principles can look like across education, assessment, and intervention, helping you reflect on how recovery-focused your current stroke practice truly is.

Whether you work in inpatient rehab, outpatient neuro, home health, or education, this episode will challenge and refine how you think about recovery, compensation, and the powerful role OT professionals play in post-stroke neuro-rehabilitation. 🧠✨

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OT Potential courses are presented as live webinars, then released on-demand video and audio via the OT Potential Podcast. Attendance in the live webinar will be indicated on your certificate. Learn more about how our courses help meet live webinar requirements, and OT CEU requirements overall.

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Learning Objectives

1. You will recognize occupation-based assessments OTs can use related to stroke recovery.
2. You will be able to identify evidence-based OT interventions for neuro recovery after stroke.

Agenda

Intro (5 minutes)

Discussion (40 minutes)

1. Tell me your OT story—and where your interest in neuro rehab has led you.
2. Holistically prioritizing neuro-recovery is a passion of yours. Why is that?
3. What new science has shaped your thinking about neuro-recovery over the past few years?
4. For you, what are the core principles OT professionals need to follow to prioritize neuro-recovery?
   (These are my guesses from your LinkedIn: Motor learning over compensation,  High-repetition, task-specific practice, Sensory-rich feedback to shape movement.)
5. How can we set the tone for neuro-recovery through patient education?
6. What assessments do you gravitate toward when neuro-recovery is the goal?
7. What core interventions should OT professionals rely on to promote recovery?
8. I’ve seen you share that skilled neuro therapists are very good at noticing micro-wins—“early signals of rewiring that are easy to miss if you’re not trained to look for them.” Tell me more about this. How can we encourage our patients along the way? (Neuro-recovery is hard.)
9. I can’t help but ask one question about tech. If you were at a small rural hospital like me, with a limited budget, what tech tools would you use?

Live Q&A (10 min)

Closing (5 min)

Supporting Research and Journal Articles

• Effectiveness of a rehabilitation program involving functional proprioceptive stimulation for postural control and motor recovery among stroke patients: a double-blinded, randomized, controlled trial
• Higher Doses of Intensive Upper Limb Rehabilitation for Moderate to Severe Impairment in Acute, Subacute Stroke: Phase I Dose Escalation Study
• The Implications of Microglial Regulation in Neuroplasticity-Dependent Stroke Recovery

Target Audience/Educational Level

Our target audience is occupational therapy practitioners who are looking to learn about neuro recovery after stroke. The educational level is introductory.

Financial and Non-financial Disclosures

It is the policy of OT Potential to disclose any financial and non-financial interest the provider or instructor may have in a product or service mentioned during an activity. This is to ensure that the audience is made aware of any bias of the speaker.

We here at OT Potential have no financial stake in this topic.

Speakers

Henry Hoffman, MS, OTR/L

Graduated from D’Youville College in Buffalo, NY in 1997 with a Masters degree in occupational therapy. Since graduation, he has worked in a variety of settings including home health, acute, sub-acute, and outpatient rehab. Prior to leaving Burke Rehabilitation Hospital in New York, he worked as a clinical specialist in orthopedic medicine and manual therapy of the upper quadrant. Henry left Burke in the fall of 2002 to co-launch Saebo.

Sarah Lyon, OTR/L

Sarah’s passion is helping fellow OT practitioners translate evidence into daily practice. Sarah earned her BA in religion from St. Olaf College, then earned her master’s degree in occupational therapy from New York University in 2011.

Since then, she’s worked in numerous facilities, including a critical access hospital, an acute trauma hospital, and a state inpatient psychiatric hospital. Sarah is the founder/owner of OT Potential. Read more about OT Potential here.

This course was designed to meet your continuing education requirements

We designed the courses in the Club to meet the requirements for “online” and “independent/self-study” courses. To verify the requirements from your specific state (within the US), check out our post, OT Continuing Education Requirements. If you are outside of the United States and have questions, please contact us.

We are proud to be an AOTA Approved Provider and to meet the requirements for your NBCOT renewal.

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