Welcome to Funtastic OT Tools’ first blogpost!

3-15-2023

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I created Funtastic OT Tools as part of my capstone project, a requirement for my doctoral degree at the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences. For this project, I developed a website to assist occupational therapists in delivering pediatric telehealth services by providing evidence-based and client-centered interventions and gaining insight into the impact of cultural factors, such as health literacy, on therapy resources. This led me to create a pilot study called “Websites as a Telehealth Resource for Pediatric Occupational Therapy Services.” The following information is my capstone project’s dissemination.

Background:

The Evidence

Telehealth plays an important role in healthcare because of the following:

• It is an alternative service delivery method that provides therapy services without the need for an in-person office visit (Singh et al., 2022).

• It increases accessibility to services and reduces delays in services (American Occupational Therapy Association, 2020; World Federation of Occupational Therapy, 2014).

• It supports collaboration between occupational therapists and caregivers to encourage the carryover of therapeutic strategies within the home environment (Zylstra, 2013).

Despite the positive aspects associated with telehealth, occupational therapists may:

• Lacking telehealth training to provide services in this delivery model (Sprianu et al., 2022)

• Being unfamiliar with cultural factors that influence treatment planning, which affects children’s learning and engagement in activities in an online setting (Singleton & Krause, 2009)

• Experiencing time constraints that affect their opportunities to search, review, and create therapy activities and caregiver educational resources, hindering them from providing effective telehealth sessions (Larsson-Lund et al., 2021; Sprianu et al., 2022; Zylstra, 2013)

Online resources, specifically websites, are tools for occupational therapists to improve their clinical practice and provide evidence-based resources to deliver effective telehealth occupational therapy (OT) interventions (Zylstra, 2013). Websites can do the following:

• Provide opportunities to adjust materials to meet children’s learning needs

• Promote caregiver education by encouraging open collaboration to increase their involvement in their child’s therapy sessions

Despite the positive aspects of websites, website resources can provide inaccurate health-related information. Therefore, there is a need for websites that provide evidence-based and accurate information for occupational therapists to use in the telehealth setting (Zylstra, 2013).

Purpose

This website aims to provide occupational therapists with tools to create evidence-based and client-centered interventions and gain insight into the impact of cultural factors, such as health literacy, regarding therapeutic resources within a telehealth setting for OT services.

Methodology

Before creating the website, I reviewed the following:

• OT website resources with therapeutic activities and caregiver handouts to determine if they were supported by current, evidence-based research

• Health literacy levels recommended by the U.S. National Institute of Health to develop educational materials

• Activities that could be implemented in different settings

• Behavioral strategies to address children's behaviors that may be exhibited in the telehealth setting

I created the content on the website to ensure occupational therapists have access to evidence-based resources to enhance their clinical practice and be able to deliver therapeutic interventions (Zylstra, 2013). The website includes the following content pages:

• Home—Welcomes the users to the website to learn about its purpose

• Therapy Activities —Various therapeutic activities organized around the type and purpose of the tasks

• Caregiver Educational Resources —Informational handouts that provide information on specific topics for occupational therapists to provide to caregivers to help them understand their child’s needs.

• Therapist Resources—Various resources to support occupational therapists’ clinical practice and intervention planning process

• Blog—Information that provides insight into pediatric, telehealth, caregiver education, and clinical practice topics

• About—Information regarding the researcher’s background and to help align occupational therapists with the project's mission.

• Contact—Occupational therapists are able to reach out, provide feedback, share ideas, ask questions, and request additional resource considerations

• Copyright and Disclaimer—Information about protecting the ownership of the materials and website while allowing for fair use of the supplied materials

Analysis

The performance application programming interface (API) measured where the occupational therapists navigated on the website and which resources they downloaded (Benzell & Alstyne, 2016).

Results

Performance API results revealed the following information:

• The occupational therapists reviewed each of the website’s web pages and downloaded all resources.

• There were high user visits for the Home and Therapy Activities web pages.

• There were low user visits to the Contact and Practice Improvement Guide web pages.

• There were high resource downloads relating to fine motor activities and caregiver education.

• There were low resource downloads relating to sensory processing and self-care therapy activities.

• These results revealed the areas on the website that I could improve to increase performance API outcomes to provide occupational therapists with better website resources that they are more likely to need or use in pediatric telehealth sessions.

Conclusion

I drew the following conclusions from my study:

• Websites can be tools to enhance occupational therapists’ clinical practice and provide evidence-based resources (Zylstra, 2013).

• Website resources can increase the use of therapeutic activities and educational handouts available for pediatric telehealth OT sessions.

• There is limited research on how websites can be therapy tools for providing educational and therapeutic resources that facilitate evidence-based and culturally respectful materials.

• The purpose of this website was to provide occupational therapists with resources for creating evidence-based, client-centered interventions and assist with gaining insight into the impact of cultural factors on therapeutic resources, such as health literacy.

• The results of the pilot study showed that websites can influence occupational therapists’ clinical practice, therapy intervention, and caregiver education.

• There need to be more evidence-based resources to support occupational therapists’ clinical practice in different settings and with engaging children and educating caregivers.

• Websites have the potential to be a tool to provide evidence-based resources that support client-centered interventions and culturally sensitive therapeutic resources.

References

• American Occupational Therapy Association. (2020). Occupational therapy practice framework: Domain and process- Fourth edition. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 74(S2), 1-87. https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2020.74S2001

• Benzell, S. G., & Alstyne, M. V. (2016). The role of APIs in firm performance. SSRN Electronic Journal, 1, 1-40. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2843326

• Larsson-Lund, M., Lexell, E. M., & Nyman, A. (2021). Optimising the development of sustainable internet-based occupational therapy interventions: Important key actions and perspectives to consider. Scandinavian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 29(4), 259-269. https://doi.org/10.1080/11038128.2021.1950206

• Singh, J., Albertson, A., & Sillerud, B. (2022). Telemedicine during COVID-19 crisis and in post-pandemic/post-vaccine world- Historical overview, current utilization, and innovative practices to increase utilization. Healthcare, 10(6), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare10061041

• Singleton, K., & Krause, E. M. S. (2009). Understanding cultural and linguistic barriers to health literacy. American Nurses Association, 14(3), 1-2. https://doi.org/10.3912/OJIN.Vol14No03Man04

• Sprianu, C., Krpalek, D., Kugel, J. D., Bains, G., & Gharibvand, L. (2022). COVID-19 and telehealth use among occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech-language pathology practitioners in the United States. Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practices, 20(2), 1-7. https://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2129&context=ijahsp

• World Federation of Occupational Therapy, (2014). World Federation of Occupational Therapists' position statement on telehealth. International Journal of Telerehabilitation, 6(1), 37-40. https://doi.org/10.5195/ijt.2014.6153

• Zylstra, S. E. (2013). Evidence for the use of telehealth in pediatric occupational therapy. Journal of Occupational Therapy, Schools, & Early Intervention, 6(4), 326-355. https://doi.org/10.1080/19411243.2013.860765

*Images from Canva (free version)