Instructional Concurrent Session 5

Are you a therapist thinking about starting your own practice? This session will help you to make the decision that is right for you! Embark on a comprehensive journey exploring the ins and outs of starting a successful hand therapy private practice. This presentation is designed to provide you with a balanced perspective, delving into the positives, challenges, and the practical realities involved in establishing your own hand therapy practice. The presentation will explore both the concept of a mobile hand therapy practice, as well as a clinic based practice. Topics will include but will not be limited to how to start, marketing, telehealth, growth, financial considerations and Q & A.

Level: Entry

Children needing hand therapy is a unique population. And it’s more than a collection of different diagnoses and smaller hands. Children have developmental milestone considerations, psychological needs, occupational differences, varied family/social dynamics and a whole host of other aspects that make working with children about more than just "smaller hands." This session will cover the importance of developmental considerations of your patient, as well as family dynamics that directly affect your sessions and your client. Additionally, the tools you need to have on hand, and the space you need to create in your clinic, in order to meet the unique needs of the pediatric population will be discussed. It is essential to connect with the child and family and build trust and rapport while using play as a primary occupation. Participants will leave with recommendations on how to uniquely structure clinic spaces, plan treatment sessions, and create an environment that improves your patient’s outcomes while preserving and respecting the pediatric nature of your patient. Finally, this course will incorporate case-based learning, to include video footage of pediatric sessions, highlighting the unique nature of their treatment sessions and guidance on how to blend hand therapy with a play based focus.

Level: Entry

Did your client’s goal progression stall? Did they report feeling “overwhelmed” and unable to decide how to proceed? Solution-focused counseling techniques assist you in building trust with your clients and empower them to create solutions for barriers, now and in the future. In this session, you will learn basic counseling skills for interviewing clients, identifying their wants, gauging progress, and applying these techniques with pain neuroscience education to improve occupational performance and satisfaction.

Level: Entry

This dynamic multi-disciplinary presentation will guide therapists across all experience levels to critically think about why they are prescribing exercises for their patients, including the rationale for volume, intensity, speed, and mode as it applies to our patient populations. Rehabilitative exercises differ from traditional exercise programs given by personal trainers in that they are designed by therapists to achieve specific measurable outcomes that integrate the patient’s functional goals. We will explore exercise prescription as medicine and how it relates to our patients' functional roles, their age, stage of healing, and treatment diagnosis. A comprehensive physiology review will be outlined by one of the top Exercise Physiologists in the field to give the learner a thorough background of tissue adaptations. Therapists will leave being able to critically think about why exactly they prescribe a certain set of exercises rather than defaulting to 3 sets of 10 repetitions and engage the patient in their therapeutic exercise to achieve better buy-in and compliance. Other considerations, such as when should we do manual work to get the most out of our treatment sessions as well as proprioceptive considerations of exercise, will also be discussed.

Level: Intermediate