AOTA Reflective Essay

I really enjoyed the AOTA conference. I attended many classes and learned so much in such a short amount of time. I went to a class called, “Innovate to rehabilitate: How the purposeful application of interactive technology can be use to reach clients with dementia.” The class was an hour and a half long full of interesting information about dementia and technology. For my first fieldwork 1 experience, I was at a skilled nursing facility. During my time at this facility, I followed an OT who worked with many clients who had dementia. Whenever we came into the room to bring the client to therapy, the same thing occurred. The client never wanted to participate in therapy and had zero motivation to get out of bed. The OT spent a lot of time trying to encourage the client to participate. What I learned during this class at AOTA could have benefited these

The OT presenter stated that using technology could enhance our ability to reach clients who have dementia, but also make therapy easy and fun. This was interesting to think about because, before this class, I had never known what I could do for clients who had dementia. It reminded me of something we learned in class. We learned that it is our job to be creative and use technology for different purposes. We learned about high-tech and low-tech, including when to use them in therapy. I’m glad I had learned about this before going to this class because it gave me a better understanding of how it could benefit someone. One of our learning objectives for this course was to identify the role of the OTA and OT in the delivery of assistive technology services and I feel like this class at AOTA allowed me to do that. I am now able to determine appropriate high-tech and low-tech adaptations for clients who have