Pediatric OT Evidence Review

In this 1 hour course, we will be diving into an incredibly helpful journal article that summarizes the evidence behind pediatric OT interventions.

The authors take 52 pediatric OT interventions for children with disabilities and rate the evidence behind them.

They organize the evidence into a traffic light infographic—where green means “the evidence supports this intervention.”

This alone makes the evidence ratings super easy to scan and more accessible for therapists (and families and policy makers)! Then, they even go so far as to draw out common principles between green light interventions.

To discuss how this research applies to your occupational therapy practice, we are excited to welcome to the podcast, Michelle DeJesus, MS OTR/L. Michelle is a pediatric occupational therapist working specifically in pediatric outpatient rehabilitation and early intervention. She and I will talk through what it looks like for busy therapists on the ground to leverage this evidence to improve their care.

1. You will be able to describe 2 trends among interventions with a strong evidence base.

2. You will be able to identify the 4 common components of activity-based green light interventions.

• Intro

• Breakdown and analysis of journal article

  • Quick intro to pediatric OT trends

  • The problem with research…

  • What was the aim (and purpose!) of this research?

  • What were the authors’ methods?

  • What were the results?

  • What intervertentions did they find—and how did they rate them?

  • What was the discussion and clinical implications?

  • Conclusions and Future Research

  • Takeaways for OT Practitioners

• Discussion on practical implications for OTs (with guest Michelle DeJesus)

  1. Can you tell us about how you found OT?

  2. Can you tell us about your current OT work?

  3. What were your initial impressions of this article?

  4. How do you currently partner with families and is there anything you would do differently after reading this article?

  5. The evidence behind activity-based/top-down approaches is robust—does this align with what you see in your own practice?

  6. The authors identified 4 key ingredients that activity-based/top-down interventions have in common. Did those resonate with your work?

  7. Do you think studies like this are widely shared among OTs? How can we make them more so?

  8. What do you think are some barriers to implementing research like this?

  9. What needs to change so we can provide evidence informed interventions like we talked about today?

Primary

• Effectiveness of paediatric occupational therapy for children with disabilities: A systematic review

Additional

• State of the evidence traffic lights 2019: Systematic review of interventions for preventing and treating children with cerebral palsy

• Occupational therapy practice guidelines for early childhood: Birth–5 years

Mentioned Resources

• 10 principles of neuroplasticity

• The Boy Who Could Run But Not Walk

• Ten Fingers Ten Toes—Twenty Things Everyone Needs to Know: Neuroplasticity for Children

• Beyond Behaviors: Using Brain Science and Compassion to Understand and Solve Children’s Behavioral Challenges

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.

OT Potential pays guest speakers an honorarium for their participation, either directly or to an institution of the speaker's choosing at their request. We invite guests whose expertise often comes from practices, programs, or building products in their field. Where a speaker has a financial interest in the subject of a course, we disclose it below so you can weigh it for yourself.

OT Potential's interest in this topic: We have no financial stake in this topic.

Speaker interests: Michelle DeJesus owns Neuplay Therapy, a pediatric occupational therapy practice. She did not promote it during this course.