Document Type

Capstone

Abstract

Incidence of Parkinson's disease is growing due to the rise of the aging population requiring increased need for occupational therapy to facilitate independence and aging in place. Occupational therapy practitioners will need to have a general understanding of how to treat clients with the disease by becoming informed on the impact on occupations, evidence-based interventions, and available resources to clients and caregivers. Objectives of this project related to facilitating aging in place by maximizing client's quality of life and independence in their least restrictive environment. Three objectives were the focus of this project: • Occupational therapy practitioners will gain a better understanding of the disease process and how it impacts occupations • Occupational therapy practitioners will improve abilities to treat common symptoms associated with the disease • Occupational therapy practitioners will have more resources to better inform clients with Parkinson's disease and their caregivers Relevant articles pertaining to information of progression of Parkinson's disease and its impact on function and evidence-based interventions including use of adaptive equipment, physical exercise, and community resources for clients and caregivers guided this project. After analyzing and synthesizing relevant scholarly literature, the comprehensive resource manual was developed. The manual titled, "Preserving Function with Parkinson's Disease: A guide for Occupational Therapy Practitioners", was intended as a resource guide for a foundation to treatment intervention and program development. Once the manual was completed, it was distributed and presented to 12 occupational therapy practitioners who worked with adult and geriatric clients in the skilled nursing, outpatient, and home health settings. Then, feedback forms were created to measure objectives, distributed to each practitioner, and then collected. Results indicated most participants strongly agreed or agreed that all objectives were met. Most participants also felt the manual was easy to follow and would utilize this manual for future reference. Some participants reported the most beneficial aspects of the manual included the adaptive equipment list, exercise program guidelines, summary of stages, links to community and on line resources, visuals for exercises, and types of intervention. Participants also reported cons to the manual including no access to a digital copy, needing more cognitive/psychosocial aspects of the disease, lack of graded interventions for each stage of the disease, and new techniques for experienced clinicians were not included. Though objectives for this project were met based off participants' responses, there were limiting factors that negatively affected the outcome. Five out of 12 participants did not give any cons for the manual making it difficult to assess the need for improvement for the manual itself. It is recommended that ample time is given to participants to independently review the manual to facilitate increased substantial feedback. In addition, more innovative interventions should be added to this manual to cater to more experienced therapists.

Publication Date

2016

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