Personal Experience Gives OT Faculty Unique Perspective
The first occupational therapists Amber Jenkins, OTD, MLS, OTR/L, assistant professor of occupational therapy, remembers having weren’t trained at all in the discipline – it was her mom and dad.
Growing up in rural Wamego, Kansas, Jenkins was born with a condition known as Poland Syndrome, resulting in a limb difference on her right hand. But she said she never felt – and was never made to feel — that she was limited because of it. In fact, her parents supported her in any endeavor — when she wanted to play baseball, her father modified a glove to fit on her limb different side. When she wanted to use a hair dryer, her mother sewed a custom sleeve to fit over her right hand to hold it.
Rockhurst Alumna, OTD Students Help Launch Soccer S.T.A.R.S.
Doctor of Occupational Therapy students were integral in the launch and success of Kansas City Scott Gallagher Soccer Club's S.T.A.R.S. program for special needs kids this past year. S.T.A.R.S. stands for Success Through Adaptive Reactional Soccer and was founded by Rockhurst OT alumna Jessica Lamb, ‘13, herself the mother of a child with Autism. Rockhurst OT students serve as assistant coaches in the program, helping create activities and working with young athletes to help them thrive in practices and games, often providing constant 1:1 assistance and advising the club’s coaches.
In addition to OT students, the Rockhurst Women’s Soccer Team served as S.T.A.R.S. volunteers this fall for a session, playing with the kids and helping them learn soccer skills. The entire experience serves as an example of the University's mission to the community and provides practical pediatrics work for OT students preparing for their careers.
Faculty, Students Play Santa, Delivering Accessible Toys to Ability KC’s Young Clients
For many children, unwrapping presents on Christmas means discovering all order of blinking, beeping, moving things to annoy the adults in the room.
However, those with developmental or neurological disabilities can have trouble with the fine motor skills needed to push or pull the corresponding controls on those sorts of toys.
That’s why students and faculty from Rockhurst University’s exercise science, physical and occupational therapy, communication sciences and disorders, nursing, and engineering departments teamed up to modify toys, bypassing the smaller switches and instead installing one big “jellybean” button. On Tuesday, just in time for the holidays, a number of faculty and one of the students who helped make those modifications brought the toys to Ability KC to distribute to the organization’s young clients. Read more
Playing, With a Purpose — Short, Intensive Therapy Helmed by OT Faculty, Alumna, Yields Dramatic Results
Through the tunnel. Pick out a hat. Return to the tunnel. Repeat, this time with socks.
That was the game – and the challenge — for a group of children participating in summer therapy programs at Ability KC, an organization that provides medical, therapeutic and educational services for children and adults with disabilities.
It all sounds like fun and games — it is! — but all of these activities come with a very particular purpose. The children taking part all have one arm wrapped in a cast, part of an intensive monthlong constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT) program held each year at Ability KC by Katie Ryan-Bloomer, Ph.D., assistant professor of occupational therapy at Rockhurst University, where she works alongside therapists including Bethany Tackett, a 2013 Master of Occupational Therapy graduate and occupational therapist at Ability KC, and current Rockhurst University OT student volunteers. Read more