Finding Motivation

This week on FW was a lesson straight out of the books on the importance of meaningful activities in therapy. The OT working with my patient had been having difficulty getting this lady to participate in therapy. She had refused the OT the day before with the promise of working with her the next day. When we went to get her for her "appointment", she again refused stating she had already worked with PT and was tired. It dawned on me that she equated therapy with exercise and when I told her I had a couple of games we could play somewhere other than in the therapy room, she was willing to participate. What could have been a second refusal turned into meeting the OT's needed minutes of therapy and showing progress in activity tolerance. During the therapy session, this lady commented on some flowers outside and we incorporated making a flower arrangement for her to take to her room. She liked the decoupaged vase we used and I asked her if she'd like to make one for our next session and her grin was all I needed for an answer. I was lucky to find another activity my lady wanted to do but thinking about future sessions and how to go about working on her dressing and toileting goals is another problem. The OT mentioned she had to "trick" her into working on her ADLs. In an article entitled Motivating the Elderly Client in Long-Term Care it was stressed that giving the client a choice in activity and goals to work on goes a long way. I think reminding my lady about her goal to get home and discussing what she needs to be able to do in order to do that and then letting her decide what she wants to work on will hopefully get her to work willingly on her ADLs. We'll see how this plan works in future sessions.