2. Communicates effectively with a wide range of clients, peers, and professionals both verbally and non-verbally.
I am currently in an outpatient rehab facility of a hospital. We have a patient that is a 28 year-old female and she has a TBI secondary to a MVA. She has been getting treatment in outpatient for a while now, so all of the rehab staff has gotten to know her very well. She receives PT and OT services right now from the facility. She currently is able to walk with a quad cane with moderate assistance for leg and foot placement on her R side and arm placement on her R side. Two weeks ago, her dad asked the PTA working with her if she was going to be able to live independently anytime soon, since she is 28 years-old and has never lived without her parents by her side. This was something that concerned the PTA so she came to OT asking our opinion on the situation.
After discussing it for a couple of days, we came to the conclusion that she was not ready to live independently because of her current lack of safety awareness and impulsiveness. The next time she came in, we mentioned that she ask her dad to attend the next session so that we could talk to him about the future. When he came in the next time, we talked with him addressing his vision for her future by saying that it is good to look forward to her one day living alone. However, we also explained to him that she was not ready to live fully independent by herself just yet, but that she has the ability to do a lot of household chores and self-care at home with supervision while living with her family. Once we explained this to him, he understood and agreed that he and the rest of the family will supervise her while she performs chores and her self-care routine at home. We gave her “homework” in which she was told to do a load of laundry, do the dishes, and perform her morning routine standing at the sink. The patient agreed and we are hopeful that she will come back this week saying that she did her homework and was successful with it.
This situation helped me to realize how many people there are in a team situation when working with a patient. We had to make sure that everyone was on the same page in order to create a smoother approach to the patient reaching her goals. Once everyone had agreed, we were able to see the expectations that the family has for the patient as well as what the patient needs to work on from an OT and PT standpoint. Working collaboratively with a team is very important. It is crucial to make sure that everyone is on board with the patient’s current status as well as the expectations for the future.