The Role of Occupational Therapy in the Care of Informal Caregivers of People With Dementia: A Concept Analysis

Informal caregivers (care partners) are people, such as family members, who provide care to those who cannot care for themselves, including people with dementia (PwD). Care partners assist PwD in their daily occupations, often without training. Caring for PwD can lead to emotional, physical, financial, and occupational challenges for care partners. Occupational therapy (OT) has a role to play in the care of PwD. However, if clinicians do not operate from a dyadic model, care partners’ needs may be overlooked. Problem: Although addressing the care partner dyad is important to the delivery of OT, the role of OT in the care of informal caregivers of PwD is not well articulated in the OT literature, which makes it difficult for OT practitioners to provide optimal care. Clarifying this concept can improve the delivery of OT services for the care partner-PWD dyad. Purpose: The purpose of this project was to conduct a concept analysis on the role of OT in the care of informal caregivers of PwD. Results: The role of OT with informal caregivers of PwD is to identify barriers to participation and challenges to effective occupational performance with the care partner-PWD dyad, and to implement interventions to enable participation and enhance performance. They key attributes of this role are a) viewing the care partner-PWD dyad as the “client”, b) taking a dyadic approach to the OT process, c) providing caregiver education and training, d) addressing home safety and environmental modification, e) long term planning, and f) interdisciplinary care coordination.https://soar.usa.edu/otdcapstonesspring2025/1069/thumbnail.jp

Barriers and Facilitators of a Sense of Belonging Among Occupational Therapy Students and Faculty: A Qualitative Study Using the Ecology of Human Performance Framework

A sense of belonging significantly influences both student engagement and faculty motivation. The objective of this study was to identify the barriers and facilitators of a sense of belonging among students and faculty of an occupational therapy department. A qualitative descriptive study was conducted with fifty-one students and ten faculty recruited via non-random purposeful sampling. Data were collected through focus group discussions with students and semi-structured interviews with faculty. Both the focus group discussions and interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed by a professional transcription service. Inductive coding was used to identify initial themes, which were then deductively mapped to the context construct of the Ecology of Human Performance (EHP) Framework. Five main themes emerged from the focus group discussions with students: personal challenges and emotional stressors, triggers in the learning environment, peer support and cohort dynamics, faculty support and engagement, and cultural sensitivity and representation. Three main themes emerged from the faculty interviews: leadership and team cohesion, membership in social groups and committees, and the physical environment and proximity to students. Mapping these themes to the EHP framework revealed that the physical and social environments had the greatest impact on the sense of belonging for both students and faculty in this study. Increasing opportunities for social interactions and addressing physical barriers to student-faculty engagement can enhance the sense of belonging in occupational therapy educational settings

An Educational Video Guide to Aging in Place

The growing population of older adults in the U.S. faces numerous challenges in maintaining independence while aging in place. Key findings from the needs assessment and literature review underscore the importance of accessible resources, health promotion, and health literacy in fostering autonomy and well-being among older adults. Occupational therapy addresses individual needs, educates on resource availability, and promotes interventions to enhance older adults\u27 independence and safety. The purpose of this project was to create an educational video guide aimed at empowering older adults and their families with the knowledge and tools to overcome barriers to aging in place. This project includes five videos focusing on fall prevention and recovery, modifying daily activities, establishing exercise routines, using mobility aids, and promoting health management. Each video incorporates evidence-based strategies, clear demonstrations, and accessible resources to support learning. By addressing common barriers, such as environmental hazards, social isolation, and health conditions, the video guide provides practical solutions to improve quality of life. Disseminated via YouTube, this accessible resource offers a proactive approach to aging in place, enabling older adults to sustain meaningful activities and autonomy in familiar environments. Keywords: older adults, aging in place, occupational therapy, independence, autonomy, quality of lifehttps://soar.usa.edu/otdcapstonesfall2024/1053/thumbnail.jp

Who Rpinted Shakespeare’s Fourth Folio?

According to Fredson Bowers, writing in Shakespeare Quarterly in 1951, we will never know the printer of that section "until we know everything there is to be learned about seventeenth-century types." 2 Bowers doubted we could ever list the full set of F4's printers because F4 was printed anonymously, and the volume left few clues about its printers. While George Watson Cole's 1909 "examination of the letterpress show[ed] that a copy of the Third Folio was apparently broken into three portions and sent to three different printers," Bowers himself only got as far as attributing the first of F4's three separately paginated parts. 3 The purpose of this note is to identify the other two printers involved in F4, one of whom, John Macock, was the printer whose shop was responsible for F4's Hamlet. Regrettably, this short note does not include everything there is to be learned about seventeenth-century types.

De novo mutations across 1,465 diverse genomes reveal mutational insights and reductions in the Amish founder population

De novo mutations (DNMs), or mutations that appear in an individual despite not being seen in their parents, are an important source of genetic variation whose impact is relevant to studies of human evolution, genetics, and disease. Utilizing high-coverage whole-genome sequencing data as part of the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Program, we called 93,325 single-nucleotide DNMs across 1,465 trios from an array of diverse human populations, and used them to directly estimate and analyze DNM counts, rates, and spectra. We find a significant positive correlation between local recombination rate and local DNM rate, and that DNM rate explains a substantial portion (8.98 to 34.92%, depending on the model) of the genome-wide variation in population-level genetic variation from 41K unrelated TOPMed samples. Genome-wide heterozygosity does correlate with DNM rate, but only explains &lt;1% of variation. While we are underpowered to see small differences, we do not find significant differences in DNM rate between individuals of European, African, and Latino ancestry, nor across ancestrally distinct segments within admixed individuals. However, we did find significantly fewer DNMs in Amish individuals, even when compared with other Europeans, and even after accounting for parental age and sequencing center. Specifically, we found significant reductions in the number of C→A and T→C mutations in the Amish, which seem to underpin their overall reduction in DNMs. Finally, we calculated near-zero estimates of narrow sense heritability ( h 2 ), which suggest that variation in DNM rate is significantly shaped by nonadditive genetic effects and the environment. </jats:p

Measurement of the inclusive isolated prompt photon cross section in pp collisions at root s=7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A measurement of the cross section for the inclusive production of isolated prompt photons in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy √s=7TeV is presented. The measurement covers the pseudorapidity ranges |ηγ|<1. 37 and 1.52≤|ηγ|<1.81 in the transverse energy range 15≤ETγ<100GeV. The results are based on an integrated luminosity of 880nb-1, collected with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Photon candidates are identified by combining information from the calorimeters and from the inner tracker. Residual background in the selected sample is estimated from data based on the observed distribution of the transverse isolation energy in a narrow cone around the photon candidate. The results are compared to predictions from next-to-leading-order perturbative QCD calculations. © 2011 CERN, for the ATLAS Collaboration