Not Just About the Equipment

OK. Last week I blogged about how to motivate my patient to work on ADLs and possibly discussing with her what she needs to be able to do in order to go home to motivate her to do this. After a fun craft session and getting her comfortably back in bed, I talked to her about her wanting to go home and needing to work on self-care tasks and standing tolerance. I also conspiratorially added that my instructor wanted me to work with her on those activities and she agreed. I gave her a choice of what she could work on and she chose "going to the bathroom". Not MY first choice but hey, it's not about me. I came across an OT blog about Elderly patients' perceptions about PADL interventions. It made me realize that not only giving our patients a choice of which ADLs to work on but HOW they want to be able to accomplish it is important. I won't have to worry about this with my lady who definitely lets me know her likes and dislikes but for future patients, it will be important to find out how they really want to be able to their ADLs. It may be they don't want to use adaptive equipment or do things in a different way. We need to remember not to focus just on the end result but also the process along the way.