Occupational Therapy News & Events

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