Investigating visual attention during scene perception of safe and unsafe occupational performance.

BACKGROUND: Occupational therapists routinely use observation for evaluation, intervention planning, and prediction of a client's occupational performance and/or safety within the environment. Perception of safety contributes to the decision-making process for discharge or placement recommendations. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to determine if differences exist in safety ratings and eye movements between occupational therapists and nontrained matched individuals while viewing domain-specific versus non-domain-specific images. METHOD: Ten licensed occupational therapists and 10 age-, gender-, and education level-matched participants completed this eye-tracking study. FINDINGS: For all image exposure durations, occupational therapists had more polarized safety ratings for stroke-related image content but little evidence of differences in eye movements between groups. Eye movement group differences did not emerge in the regions of interest identified by an independent expert panel. IMPLICATIONS: The results point to a complex relationship between decision making and observational behaviour in occupational assessment and highlight the need to look beyond image features.

Collaboration behind-the-scenes: key to effective interprofessional education.

A variety of stakeholders, including students, faculty, educational institutions and the broader health care and social service communities, work behind-the-scenes to support interprofessional education initiatives. While program designers are faced with multiple challenges associated with implementing and sustaining such programs, little has been written about how program designers practice the interprofessional competencies that are expected of students. This brief report describes the backstage collaboration underpinning the Dalhousie Health Mentors Program, a large and complex pre-licensure interprofessional experience connecting student teams with community volunteer mentors who have chronic conditions to learn about interprofessional collaboration and patient/client-centered care. Based on our experiences, we suggest that just as students are required to reflect on collaborative processes, interprofessional program designers should examine the ways in which they work together and take into consideration the impact this has on the delivery of the educational experience.

Observation patterns of dynamic occupational performance.

BACKGROUND: Visual observation is a key component of both formal and informal occupational performance assessment, but it is unknown how therapists gather this visual information. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to explore observational behaviour of occupational therapists and non-health care professionals when watching videos of simulated clients post-stroke participating in everyday activity. METHOD: Ten licensed occupational therapists and 10 age-, gender-, and education level-matched participants completed this eye-tracking study. FINDINGS: Contrary to our past work with static image viewing, we found limited evidence of differences in eye movement characteristics between the two groups, although results did support the role of bottom-up information, such as visual motion, as a determinant of looking behaviour. IMPLICATIONS: These results suggest that understanding observational behaviour in therapists can be aided with eye-tracking methodology, but future studies should probe a broad range of factors that might influence observational behaviour and performance, such as assessment goals, knowledge, and therapist experience.

Correction: Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI) and chronic cognitive impairment: A scoping review.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0174847.].

Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI) and chronic cognitive impairment: A scoping review.

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), or concussion, is the most common type of traumatic brain injury. With mTBI comes symptoms that include headaches, fatigue, depression, anxiety and irritability, as well as impaired cognitive function. Symptom resolution is thought to occur within 3 months post-injury, with the exception of a small percentage of individuals who are said to experience persistent post-concussion syndrome. The number of individuals who experience persistent symptoms appears to be low despite clear evidence of longer-term pathophysiological changes resulting from mTBI. In light of the incongruency between these longer-term changes in brain pathology and the number of individuals with longer-term mTBI-related symptoms, particularly impaired cognitive function, we performed a scoping review of the literature that behaviourally assessed short- and long-term cognitive function in individuals with a single mTBI, with the goal of identifying the impact of a single concussion on cognitive function in the chronic stage post-injury. CINAHL, Embase, and Medline/Ovid were searched July 2015 for studies related to concussion and cognitive impairment. Data relating to the presence/absence of cognitive impairment were extracted from 45 studies meeting our inclusion criteria. Results indicate that, in contrast to the prevailing view that most symptoms of concussion are resolved within 3 months post-injury, approximately half of individuals with a single mTBI demonstrate long-term cognitive impairment. Study limitations notwithstanding, these findings highlight the need to carefully examine the long-term implications of a single mTBI.

Wheelchair skills training program for clinicians: a randomized controlled trial with occupational therapy students.

OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that a brief formalized period of wheelchair skills training, added to the standard curriculum, results in significantly greater overall improvements in wheelchair skills than a standard undergraduate occupational therapy (OT) curriculum alone. SETTING: Rehabilitation center. DESIGN: Randomized controlled trial. PARTICIPANTS: Eighty-two students in a university undergraduate OT program. INTERVENTIONS: All students received the standard university curriculum. The 22 second-year students, randomly allocated to the Wheelchair Skills Training Program (WSTP) group, were also trained (on a single occasion each, in groups of 1-3 at a time) on the 50 skills that make up the WSTP. The mean +/- standard deviation (SD) training time was 121.2+/-33.5 minutes per group. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Total percentage score on the Wheelchair Skills Test (WST), Version 2.4. RESULTS: From before to after intervention, second-year students in the WSTP group increased their mean percentage WST scores +/- SD from 64.8%+/-9.0% to 81.0%+/-5.2%, a 25% improvement (P<.001). Over a comparable period, the 18 students in the second-year control group increased from 66.0%+/-8.0% to 72.4%+/-7.1%, a 9.7% improvement (P=.015). The WSTP group improved to a significantly greater extent (P=.005). For a subset of 8 students in the WSTP group who were retested 9 to 12 months later, the mean WST score was 79.7%+/-4.1%, not significantly less than their WST 2 scores (P=.29). The mean WST score for the 42 students in the fourth-year control group was 73.9%+/-4.1%, significantly lower than the mean postintervention WST score of the second-year students in the WSTP group (P< .0001) and not different from the second-year control group (P=.58). CONCLUSIONS: The WSTP is an effective way to improve the wheelchair-skills performance of OT students. This has implications for the education of all rehabilitation clinicians.