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Dysphagia During the Holidays: How to Empower and Normalize Altered Diets. Whether it’s baking holiday cookies and cakes or sitting around the table for your favorite holiday meal, food is the essential centerpiece of each gathering.  Unfortunately for people living with dysphagia, partaking in those holiday food feasts may not be possible if the proper precautions aren’t taken.

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Ostomy management for clinicians- 6 goals and how to achieve them! In in-patient rehab, stays may be short. When, as a nurse or therapist, you have a client with a new ostomy, it is easy for goal-setting in this area to be overlooked. Trained wound and ostomy staff (WOCN: Wound, Ostomy and Continence Nurse) are not always available in every setting. Nevertheless, each interaction with members of staff (nursing, therapy, medicine), are both opportunities for teaching, and opportunities to normalize and accept the situation for the person with ostomy.

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Under pressure: How to overcome the pressure ulcer problem in rehab. Rehab professionals encounter pressure ulcers more frequently than we would like to admit.  But you must wonder, with something that theoretically should be very preventable… are we truly understanding pressure ulcer staging and prevention, so we are best equipped to move our patients through a path to recovery?  A rehab team has so many layers of unique areas of expertise and there are many ways that the team can come together and tackle the problem of pressure ulcers!

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5 Things to Think About when Educating Caregivers. Educating caregivers is such an important part of what we do as clinicians, and we all would like to think that we are good at it – that the families leave their training/education sessions feeling empowered, well informed, and ready to care for their loved one.  In light of my recent experience as the ‘family member’, I have compiled a list of five things to consider when providing patient and family education.

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Rehab for Cancer Pain: What’s the best treatment? As a Physical or Occupational Therapist working with someone who is undergoing cancer treatment, you want to make sure that you are also providing appropriate interventions to address some of the physical cancer symptoms that may come up either during a primary diagnosis or with metastasis.  One of these symptoms is cancer pain.  There are many different avenues a therapist can go down to treat pain, depending on what its source is – manual therapy, positional release, exercise, and modalities are among a few.  

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Edema Management: How to improve patient compliance. Patient compliance (or lack of compliance) is a major issue for many clinicians. At times, it can be one of the biggest barriers to implementing a care plan. This lack of patient compliance can be particularly noticeable when the suggested intervention is painful, unpleasant, or challenging- which edema management certainly can be!

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Occupational Therapy and Wound Care: a match made in heaven The interests and skill sets of Occupational Therapy and Wound care are more aligned that you may think! Wound care is squarely within an OT’s scope of practice, and intersects with many of our other, occupation-based, interests. Read this article to learn about the scope of OT practice and the way that they can be effective wound care practitioners!

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The Surprising Link between Loneliness and Heart Failure. One of the populations that we wouldn’t think of first as being affected by social isolation is people with Congestive Heart Failure. The correlation may be largely unnoticed in the heart failure population, with other pressing care issues requiring attention, especially in the acute stage.  Congestive heart failure is a major reason for hospitalization and rehospitalization, and the social isolation/loneliness continues to grow.  

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Become a CBIS… and super-charge the way you work! When you first start working clinically, determining what area of practice you want to focus on can be an overwhelming and daunting task. More often than not, what you pictured yourself doing while in school is not where you end up when you become an official, licensed professional (and that’s ok!).  Lucky for us, the world of rehabilitation offers several subspecialities that can scratch anyone’s clinical itch to be better, and do better for their patients.

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Motor Learning and Feedback: How to be effective! Understanding the power of motor learning is an incredibly useful tool for a physical, occupational or speech therapist to have. Knowing the stages of motor learning, and how to give feedback to your patient, may be the most effective thing you could do to ensure that the person carries over the skills you are teaching them.

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Shattering the Myth: how to treat DVT-related swelling. Clinicians like physical therapists, occupational therapists and nurses are all too familiar with the way that developing a Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) can slam your patient’s progress to a halt. Whether you are working with a patient in acute inpatient rehab, outpatient therapy, a sub acute setting, or in home-care, the diagnosis of a DVT comes with a lot of apprehension, fear, and mixed messages about the precautions and contraindications that may now apply.

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How to effectively evaluate and treat Vestibular Dysfunction. Balance impairment is something that therapists see in their geriatric patients quite often and could be due to a variety of reasons, including central vestibular dysfunction. Learn about why this happens, how to assess for it, and all about treatment in this article, which includes assessment and Home Exercise Program Tools!

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How to include community re-integration in your care plan during COVID-19. Community is different for all of us. There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to assisting a patient and their families with community re-integration.  Patients with traumatic brain injury not only have the physical challenges that accompany such an injury, but they also have cognitive and behavioral challenges, making community re-integration an uphill battle.  As clinicians- it’s part of our job to try to consider the barriers that our clients face- and help problem-solve!

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How can I support caregivers of people with dementia? If someone close to you has ever been affected by dementia, you may know how devastating this condition can be- not only to the person themselves, but also to the family unit. Healthcare professionals such as therapists and nurses deal with these complicated family circumstances as well, when helping caregivers cope with dementia. To support caregivers of people with dementia as best you can, first we must understand what is going on…behind the scenes.

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‘Challenging’ Dementia Behavior: 5 strategies to boost your communication. Whether you are a PT, OT, SLP, Nurse or nursing tech- you will invariably be working with dementia patients over the course of your career. Feeling comfortable and capable caring for dementia patients is crucial no matter whether you’re working in acute, sub acute or a long term setting. A huge fear for caregivers is not knowing how to deal with a dementia patient who is becoming aggressive, or even worsening the situation…

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Working and living though the COVID crisis: reflections of an SLP. Guest article from Allison Frederick, SLP! ..”I’m working on turning my guilt into something else, though.  Instead of feeling guilty about still being able to work, I’m focusing on being grateful that I still get to work.  Instead of feeling guilty about living alone, I’m focusing on supporting my coworkers and friends who have no choice but to isolate from their families.  Instead of feeling guilty about being anxious, I’m focusing on the fact that I get to be there for these patients in a time when their families cannot. ..”

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Unconventional Therapy Treatments for Phantom Limb Pain. There are several fairly standardized and well-supported interventions for the treatment of phantom limb pain in therapy. Yet it remains a consistent complaint among those who have suffered limb loss, and the therapists who treat them! Here, we take a look at a few of the less often used and more unconventional therapeutic approaches to phantom limb pain: such as Neuromuscular Taping, Vibration, and Vibration/Electrical stimulation combined).

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Oven Fever: Baking ‘therapy’ in Quarantine. Unless you have been sheltering-in-place under a rock, or nursing a broken oven, you are very likely aware of a growing phenom that is affecting millions of people worldwide- a baking craze!  To many OTs right now, though, this news.….is not really all that surprising. Why is that?? Baking can be a very powerful occupation– so let’s dig a little deeper and maybe figure out what is happening from a Occupational Therapy theory point of view

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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: the unsung hero behind improving COPD? COPD is a chronic, progressive disease, affecting millions of people worldwide. As clinicians, we are quite familiar with how to treat many of the physical symptoms of COPD: breathing techniques, energy conservation, strength and endurance building- but, have you ever considered including working on your patient’s mental health?

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COVID-19 Policy Statement As we navigate the ever-changing COVID-19 situation, we all share a heightened level of awareness and concern for the wellbeing of our students, families and faculty. At ARC Seminars, we’re focused on maintaining a healthy learning environment that is committed to a high level of preparedness, and maintaining a safe community.

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FOXcast PT: Edema Management with your Patients We talk to Eimile Cahalan, OTR/L, CLT, CBIS, an OT and instructor on the topic of edema management. We cover understanding the processes of edema, the assessment and management of edema, and the value in establishing your own edema management program where you practice.

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2020: New Year’s Book-solutions! Hello, world! It is that most wonderful time of the year again…January…the time of year where we are either all aspirationally reinventing ourselves, or feeling slightly bad that we haven’t. As well as resolutions, the other yearly list I make, (and this I add to all year long), is my Books-I-Want-To-Inhale-As-Fast-As-I-Possibly-Can list! And this year’s list, so far, really reflects my aspirational mindset. There are a lot of books on this list that show where my head is at this year- basically, I want to SORT MY LIFE OUT!

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FOXcast SLP: Acquired Brain Injury and Behavior Management: Allison Fredrick, M.S., CCC/SLP, CBIST reviews of acquired brain injury, and the 2 main types – TBI vs. NTBI. We discuss the Rancho Los Amigos Scale, when it’s appropriate to use it, and how where the injury is located in the brain plays into how the patient’s cognition and behavior are affected.

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Addressing sexual activity and intimacy is an area that so many of us, as clinicians, have trouble with. It is, of course, a sensitive topic, and our discomfort with bringing it up stems from societal issues, pre-existing suppositions about our patients, and even a lack of confidence in our own roles as healthcare providers! Here, we discuss in brief the role of the nurse or therapist in discussion of the topic with patients; barriers to discussion; and models that have been used to guide the clinician in how to proceed.

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Prevent Injury during a fall...Falls are an ongoing problem for our older adults, and can result in countless injuries, cost to the medical system and the individual, and countless after effects which can include of further fear of falling, familial strain, and even subsequent institutionalization. As an adult, if you are at risk for falling, how do you prevent injury? Is it possible to “learn” how to fall or to “fall well”? And, as clinicians, is this something we are overlooking?

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ARC Seminars at the Mid-County Senior Center Health & Resource Fair! We had a blast meeting people, seniors, other healthcare vendors and community organizers at the Mid-County Senior Annual Health and Resource Fair, at Mid-County Senior Center, Wilmington, DE! This annual fair invites seniors and community members to come to a health and wellness focused event, find out more about issues affecting them and gather information on where and how to further their wellness and quality of life. We wanted to start to reach people at a local level, to help them realize that there is something they can do about this condition, provide info and local resources, and hopefully arrest some swelling before it reaches a chronic stage! If you would like to download our brochure, to provide some information about chronic swelling to some of your patients, click here.

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Dear UBE- it’s over…I’m sorry you had to hear it this way. And really- its not you- its me. You are, after all, an inanimate object. But this co-dependency has become toxic! You are holding me back, limiting my treatments, and what’s worse is- you are hitting on all my friends, too (did you think I hadn’t noticed?!). At this rate every OT in the place should have their own little UBEs, that’s how dependent we are on that sweet, sweet 5 minute cycle.

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Transgender issues in Inpatient Rehabilitation With the growingawareness and visibility of transgender issues, we are all learning and being exposed to the challenges this population can face. From misgendering and dysphoria all the way to physical violence and murder, trans people are under constant pressure and threat. It isn’t at all surprising that the sensitive needs of this population require us, as health professionals, to have some additional training and some guidelines on how to create a safe, comfortable, and accepting space. But how do we manage this, at an institutional level?? …click the link for full article…

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Attentional Focus: Can how we teach attention change…everything?? Motor learning is something every clinician should pay attention to! This is an way of working with our patients that can make the therapy we give them more effective, more meaningful, and overall translate to better outcomes. Part of this process is noting HOW we instruct our patients during therapy sessions and WHAT we tell them to pay attention to! In this article, we discuss the concept of specificity of training, motor learning, and techniques for how to make your therapy sessions really count!….click the link for full article…

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Slippin’ on Slippers: How to Reduce Falls through Footwear Falls, especially those among older adults, is one of the biggest areas of concern for therapists and nurses, and a leading cause of disability and mortality. Here, we address an often overlooked issue and give some tips as to how to bring it up with your clients!…click the link for full article…

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The Short and the Short of it: comparing low stretch bandages Many of you who read these articles will know how proper management of edema is a passionate and hotly debated topic over here at ARC Seminars HQ. Including edema control into your plan of care is vital for best practice with your patients. Once we get into the world of actually treating our patients and bringing their edema down, however, we enter tricky territory- including a whole host of new products and tools that are vital for treatment. Essential among these products is, of course, the short stretch bandage!…click the link for full article…

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Have you seen these skin changes with your patients? Many therapists and nurses notice some strange and characteristic skin changes occurring with their patients with chronic edema and lymphedema. Here, we go over 4 distinctive skin changes that you may encounter, and briefly discuss what types of treatment approaches you would include to manage and treat these conditions. There are many distinctive skin changes associated especially with the later stages of lymphedema. But why do these changes occur, what are they, and what can we do to address them? …click link for full article…

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7 Types of Swelling Therapists and Nurses Need to Know About! Edema is everywhere! Working in healthcare, we as therapists and nurses often see edema that might be occurring for a variety of reasons. Here, we discuss and characterize 7 types of swelling that you are likely to encounter clinically. To download our “Cheat Sheet” on Edema Variations, and sign up for more updates, contact us to sign up for our mailing list!…click link for full article…

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