This week, Katelyn visited Therapy Services at the Children’s Hospital, like Thom did last week. Her experience was with patients getting checkups - seeing a PT, an orthotist, and a PA to get a general overview of their health and to make adjustments to their treatment plans. While neither patient that she saw was a good candidate for the device we are planning to build, she learned a lot about how CP patients are treated and the many factors that influence their health. In particular, she spoke to medical professionals about the routine care that many CP patients receive. One of the patients she saw attends a school designed for students who have CP and other disabilities. We are hoping to speak with therapy programs in schools to understand what our patients’ capabilities are and the kind of treatments they currently do on a regular basis. Understanding the needs of patients and the environment they are usually in will be critical for designing a device that will be useful.
Because we have been struggling a bit with managing our time, we made a concrete plan to distribute research and work. We set an open-ended time to brainstorm for this upcoming Sunday, during which time we plan to have a dedicated research, brainstorm, and work session to give us a base of knowledge from which to move forward and some potential solutions to investigate. After narrowing our brainstorming list somewhat, we will go through these solutions with Courtney as well as any other PTs/OTs who work with the target population. In order to best understand the problem, we also are compiling a list of groups and people to reach out to for information. In the next week, we will begin to contact them and, if necessary, set up times to meet and/or talk with them about their experiences. These groups and people include Beth O’Neal, First Steps, posture support device companies, special education schools, and families of children with CP. We also will be touching base with Courtney soon after we develop preliminary results of brainstorming. Comments are closed.
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Thom Ellison, Emma Huff, Katelyn Miyasaki Archives
April 2019
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