Top 10 Occupational Therapy Blogs

[responsive][/responsive]As the manager of online recruitment and marketing at Horizon Healthcare Staffing, I’m always trying to find information about occupational therapy to share. I like to use different forms of social media, RSS feeds, alerts, and blogs to find my information. There are some good occupational therapy resources out there, and some not so good ones. I decided to make a top 10 list of the best occupational therapy blogs around to help differentiate the good ones from the bad. How did I come to a conclusion of only 10 blogs that I thought were good enough to be put on my list? Well I first started with the information. Was the information on the blog worth reading, and did it keep my interest? I didn’t want to put all the same type of blogs on my list, so I varied them between pediatric, app review, and general information, among others. Second, I judged the blogs on freshness. Some occupational therapy blogs may be informative, but are only updated every 6 months. Those blogs did not make my list. The occupational therapy blogs listed below are usually updated on a regular basis. Third, I wanted to see how unique each blog was. Did it just spew out information that is common knowledge, or did it give us a different or unique point of view on occupational therapy? Lastly, I determined my list based on ease of navigation and how “fun” the blog was. You could have the best blog in the world, but if people don’t know where to go on your page, it becomes useless. The user experience is a big part of how well a website or blog performs. Each occupational therapy blog listed has a short description of what the blog is about and a profile/description of the blog author (if applicable).

So without further delay, I present to you the top 10 occupational therapy blogs (in no particular order):

ABC Therapeutics – Reflections on a life work of Occupational Therapy

This occupational therapy blog is written by Christopher J. Alterio, Dr.OT, OTR. He is an occupational therapist and owns a private practice in Western New York. The main objective of his blog is to “represent an ongoing experiment in a mostly open-source exploration of occupational therapy.”

Pediatric Occupational Therapy Tips

Anne Zachry is a pediatric occupational therapist with over 20 years experience providing quality OT to children, along with caregiver instruction and support. She has a PhD in Educational Psychology, had articles published in peer-reviewed journals, in her profession’s trade magazines, in parenting magazines and on websites, such as Parents.com. She’s currently Assistant Professor of OT at The University of Tennessee Health Science Center. She’s certified to administer the Sensory Integration and Praxis Test.

ADVANCE for Occupational Therapy Practitioners

ADVANCE for Occupational Therapy Practitioners created a blog forum that posts articles with Healthcare POV (point of view). Their blog offers posts covering timely questions, advice, and opinions about the occupational therapy field. They provide a bio for each blogger in their forum. They have some pretty interesting articles that are updated on a regular basis.

Embrace Your Chaos

Dana Elliot is an occupational therapist and a mother to one amazing 18 month old girl. Her life is full of chaos…but she wouldn’t want it any other way. “Life is too short to constantly stress about being perfect, so instead, I have chosen to embrace my chaos!”

Dana shares practical tips for managing a family, household, and a tight budget. She blogs about fun activities to help develop children’s sensory-motor skills. Dana shares many of her crazy experiences of her chaotic life.

Mama OT

Christie is a California-based mom and occupational therapist with a background in gymnastics, psychology, and education. She is a mama to two precious children (a newborn and a toddler) and an OT to many. Christie shares helpful tidbits learned from her life, both as a mom and a pediatric occupational therapist.

Therapy Fun Zone

Tonya Cooley has been an Occupational Therapist since 1991.  She started out doing skilled nursing for 6 months, then moved on to pediatrics.  In pediatrics she has worked in a clinic setting, inpatient rehab and acute, ICU, early intervention, and school district.  Her goal with Therapy Fun Zone is to help stimulate creativity and information sharing.  As a therapist, she is always creating new things to use in therapy or adapting things.  She loves sharing her projects and solutions.  She started this site in order to provide a service to people using what she knows, and to reach a wider audience than just her current patients and their caregivers.

“Here at Therapy Fun Zone, we would like to share activity ideas, and encourage you to share yours in order to keep the creativity stimulated.”

OT Connections – AOTA

This blog is curated by the AOTA staff. It’s basically a compilation of authors that write about various topics within occupational therapy and healthcare. There are point of view blogs from occupational therapists, OP ED pieces, and general information articles. AOTA is a huge occupational therapy organization and has their community blog section updated regularly.

The Recycling Occupational Therapist

This blog outlines innovative interventions to treat children on the autism spectrum. Barbara Smith has have worked for over twenty-five years developing activities for children and adults with developmental and learning disabilities. Barbara has written many books on activities of occupational therapy, and began her writing career with The Recycling Occupational Therapist. She has a GeriatricOT blog and a Hippotherapy blog as well.

Notes From a Pediatric Occupational Therapist

Abby is a pediatric occupational therapist and a recent transplant to New England. She has experience working in school-based practice, early intervention (birth to three), and feeding therapy. She created this blog as a place to share her thoughts and ideas about pediatric occupational therapy, and to share resources with therapists, parents and teachers.

OT’s With Apps

The OT mTool Kit resource – review of apps and mobile device resources for OT’s working with children and adults. Carol Leynse Harpold, MS, AdEd, OTR/L, ATP has more than 30 years of Occupational Therapy experience in early intervention, school based therapy, acute care, long term care, home health and adult rehabilitation. She has her Masters of Science in Adaptive Education/Assistive Technology with 15 years experience evaluating and coordinating assistive technology services in education of elementary, middle school, secondary and post secondary students.  She has experience with evaluation and intervention of assistive technology and ergonomics to vocational rehabilitation clients in work transition, work sites and academic and academic settings.

BONUS BLOG:

Miss Awesomeness

Karen’s occupational therapy blog chronicles her OT journey starting from 2006 in the beginning of OT school, through 9 months of fieldwork, to her first year as an OT working in rural Deep South in physical dysfunction, to her transition into an elementary school system district in California. She’s currently in her third year now and learning new things every day. She states that her mind is constantly blown by the amazingness of OT!

Her profile quote: “I am in love with occupational therapy and I want everyone else to be in love with it too!”

DOUBLE BONUS BLOG:
Miss Joleen’s FABULOUS FRIENDS Occupational Therapy Blog!

Joleen Thomas is a school based occupational therapist in North Central ND. She has been an OT for 22 years; she earned her BS in Occupational Therapy in 1992, and her MA in Autism Spectrum Disorders in 2014.  She started the blog in the spring of 2013, and it has been very well received.  It contains resources, activities and interventions that are geared toward enhancing kids’/students’ skills, be it special ed or regular ed.  She uses her blog as a means to share OT related information/activities with parents of her students, as well as with other professionals and educators within her community and the special education unit that she works in.  She just enjoys working on and creating it!  She loves to share what she knows, what she learns, things she finds, etc. She has gotten a lot of positive feedback from the parents of her students and colleagues that she work with, and that really motivates her to continue on with it!

Do you have a blog that you think is worthy of a top 10 list? Email me your blog and I’ll see if you should be added to this list. I hope this list becomes a good resource for all people interested in occupational therapy.