EPortfolio: The Scholarly Capstone for the Practice Doctoral Degree in Occupational Therapy

A critical decision doctoral faculty must make is deciding what is the most appropriate capstone or terminal requirement for the practice doctorate degree that is consistent with the program’s curriculum. EPortfolios are a viable option for documenting doctoral students’ advanced knowledge and competence. After creating a professional development plan, the students record individual experiences and reflections framed by a self-selected metaphor, provide objective documentation of achievements, and verify advanced competence in a specific area in their ePortfolios. As the students construct their ePortfolios, they must engage in self-directed learning that is grounded in evidence-based and reflective practice, with a focus on developing professional characteristics. The purpose of this article is to describe the rationale and process of using an ePortfolio as the terminal requirement for a practice doctorate degree in occupational therapy

Bridge to the Future: A Career Exploration Frame of Reference for Students with Disabilities

Exploring and facilitating the transition process from school to employment for young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), especially those still in the school system, has now become an important concern for researchers, educators, and service providers working in this area. The Bridge to the Future (BTTF) Frame of Reference offers a new approach to facilitate the school-to-work transition for secondary school students with IDD in a self-contained classroom setting by adopting the Social Cognitive Career Theory and Self-Determination Theory as its main theoretical foundation. The BTTF Frame of Reference was developed for use by the team of transdisciplinary school professionals. It aims to facilitate students’ learning in the area of career exploration, goal setting, and work-related skills, as well as to improve students’ self-efficacy and self-determination skills. The purpose of the BTTF Frame of Reference is to provide guidelines to teach students with IDD vocational skills as well as other life skills, including ADLs, IADLs, and community participation, and to increase students’ readiness for transition through engaging them in career exploration activities

Intraprofessional Conversations Begin in the Classroom: An Exploratory Study of an Occupational Therapist and Occupational Therapy Assistant Joint Class

Effective occupational therapist and occupational therapy assistant partnerships are essential for the provision of quality patient care and satisfactory intraprofessional working relationships. Providing OT and OTA students with collaborative educational experiences can enhance students’ understanding and appreciation of each other’s roles, as well as set the groundwork for successful future work experiences. This project describes the experience of a graduate OT master’s degree program and an associate degree OTA program in a northeastern metropolitan city. Faculty from both programs worked together to design and implement a collaborative learning experience during the Covid-19 pandemic, conducted via Zoom. The purpose of this collaborative class was to develop a generic format for an OT and OTA joint class that can be easily adopted and embedded in any of the courses in the established curriculum. This article describes a pilot implementation of this OT and OTA class. For the majority of students, this was their first experience collaborating with their counterparts. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive via the qualitative content analysis, with many students indicating that they looked forward to more of these intraprofessional classes in future courses

Parenting stress in families with very low birth weight preterm infants in early infancy

Taking care of a premature infant adds an extra burden to already stressed parents. Previous studies have shown that parental stress occurs during the initial hospitalization. However, there is little information on parental stress over time, and the few existing results are conflicting. In addition, many studies have focused on maternal stress but there is little information about a father's long-term adaptation to stress. The purpose of this study was to examine the degree and type of parenting stress in the families of very low birth weight (VLBW) preterm infants over the first two years of life. We compared parenting stress in families with preterm infants with control families, while also comparing the stress in mothers to that in fathers. Furthermore, we explored the relationship between parenting stress in the preterm group with identified factors that included the infant's age, medical complications, and parents' perceived feeding issues after they had been discharged from the hospital. This was an exploratory study with a cross sectional design. Participants included a total of 505 mothers from Tainan, Taiwan; 297 with preterm children (239 mothers, 58 fathers) and 208 with full-term children (181 mothers, 27 fathers). Assessments including the Parenting Stress Index, Neonatal Medical Index and Behavior-based Feeding Questionnaire were used to measure parental distress, infants' medical complications and parents' perceived feeding issues, respectively. Results of the study, though not statistically significant, indicated the presence of increased parenting stress in parents of preterm infants as compared to parents of full-term infants. 13.1% of mothers with preterm infants demonstrated total stress levels that warranted clinical intervention. We also found that mothers of preterm infants presented different parenting stress patterns than fathers of preterm infants. Fathers of preterm infants tended to have overall higher stress scores than mothers. On the other hand, mothers of preterm infants tended to report more health related difficulties, more depression, higher social isolation and role restriction, and less support from their spouses, than reported by fathers. Moreover, as time went on, parents with preterm infants continued to experience greater parenting stress than those with full-term infants. Understanding the experiences of parents with preterm children is important for health care providers while interviewing parents for information regarding their children and designing intervention programs to improve children's outcomes. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd

Predicting neurodevelopmental outcomes at preschool age for children with very low birth weight

The purpose of this study was to examine predictors of neurodevelopmental outcome in very low birth weight children without major impairment at 5 years of age, as well as to identify the contribution of early neurodevelopmental assessment to preterm children's later developmental outcomes. The participants in this study included 126 children who were prematurely born with very low birth weight. Outcomes of the "childrens later development were measured in tests that factored cognitive function, motor performance, and adaptive behavior. The results indicated that more than 50% of full-Scale intelligence and 30% of both motor performance and adaptive behavior at the age of 5 can be explained by four predictors. The four predictors include preterm children's medical complications at birth, maternal education, early motor assessments, and cognitive assessments. Adding each test score obtained in early ages provides additional information to predict children's cognitive, motor, and adaptive behavior at 5 years of age. Manifold assessments conducted in multiple time periods strengthen the predictive values of later developmental outcomes. In addition, the findings of this study indicate that very low birth weight children tend to have lower adaptive behavior at 5 years old. With regard to our findings, we believe that having adaptive function is a reflection of a child's overall integrated abilities. Further study is warranted to increase understanding of this topic, as well as to be able to predict adaptive strengths and weakness and pinpoint limiting factors that may be useful for targeting behaviors in intervention. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Psychometric Characteristics of the Neonatal Oral-Motor Assessment Scale in Healthy Preterm Infants

We examined the reliability, validity, and responsiveness of the Neonatal Oral-Motor Assessment Scale (NOMAS) in healthy preterm infants. Feeding records of 147 infants (71 males, 76 females; gestational age [GA] 0 .70) in the normal category for 32 to 35 weeks'PMA. Moderate correlations were found between scores on the NOMAS and feeding performance for all age groups except for PMA of >= 36 weeks (absolute Spearman's r(s)=0.51-0.69) , indicating acceptable convergent validity. The NOMAS demonstrated moderate responsiveness to changes in oral-motor skills in every 2-week period, ranging from 32 to 36 weeks'PMA ( standard response mean greater than 0.5). This study demonstrated that the normal and disorganized categories of the NOMAS are useful, with acceptable psychometric properties, in assessing oral-motor function in preterm infants aged 32 to 35 weeks' PMA. Future research on infants with abnormal oral-motor skills is needed to further validate psychometric properties of the dysfunction category of the NOMAS