American Occupational Therapy Association

And I think APTA has one.

So I'd be curious to know what AOTA and, and schools around you, Romy, use, because some of that also factored into what rotations students are going on, because we had to get things checked off in order to graduate.

For physical therapy, they're all using the CPI, which is APTA's product, at least around here.

And then I think it must be part of the accreditation requirements.

And I have to admit, I'm not 100% sure what the OT schools are using.

I'll jump in there.

So we use the AOTA assessment tool.

So it is standardized assessment, and it's basically utilized for wherever you do your rotation.

for reviewing all of them.

I think that, you know, I'll start with the gratitude portion, which is I am grateful to AOTA, APTA, ASHA for their collective advocacy for caregiver training codes.

I do think it was a step forward.

theoretically, a step in the right direction for acknowledging the importance of caregiver training in providing good outcomes for our patients.

thank you so much for your time today and for being here thank you so much sarah i'm so grateful to you for your platform for ot potential and thank you so so much for having me today i'm really honored

Thank you for joining us on the OT potential podcast.

To earn one hour of AOTA approved continuing education for your time today, you will need to sign in or sign up at otpotential.com. Once you're in the OT potential club, you will find a five question post-course quiz connected to this episode.

When you pass the quiz with a score of 75% or higher, you will be able to download a PDF certificate that certifies your completion of this course.

It's a

hard- Was it AOTA?

Was it AOTA? Okay.

It

was AOTA.

Yeah, yeah.

Giant conference, thousands of people, hard launch.

This is also why I think it's important to distinguish overlapping competencies from professional identity.

AOTA's current scope statement explicitly describes OT as a dynamic and evolving profession responsive to consumer and societal needs, system changes, and emerging knowledge and research.

Its scope is organized around the domain and process of occupational therapy rather than a single body region or fixed list of procedures.

Professional differentiation can therefore exist even when foundational services overlap.

This does not mean that every provider should do everything or that professional boundaries and legal scopes don't matter.

They do.

AOTA explicitly notes that state laws define the scope of practice of OTs and OTAs, and the practitioners must comply with applicable statutes and regulations.

The point is that professional boundaries are not the same thing as rigidly assigning every competency to only one profession.

Right now, what we do is we go through Tisha, TODA, and TPTA, which are Texas-based approvals.

Because Tisha and TODA are ASHA and AOTA-approved providers, then the courses count for ASHA and AOTA.

They're not going to get submitted and show up on your ASHA registry, since we don't pay ASHA to be an approved provider, but the courses count for it.

So, you know, it's interesting because there's some, you know, there's so many people that don't pay for that anymore or, like, just don't want to give Ash a continued... money for various reasons and so don't pay for that registry and so it doesn't bother at all and then others it does carry more weight for that they just want it to you know show up um yeah but all the courses can apply um and do apply um to them so that's what we do right now um we're always like reevaluating that and you know we do a lot of courses you know i told you three to you know seven or eight a month and so they're live and then the recordings so We're always kind of weighing out of, you know, is there a time that we should start looking at ASHA and AOTA? And if so, when is that time and what's the team capacity look like with that number of courses and just the admin piece and having a website that has so many, you know, pieces to cover? to automate and build out so um right now we have therapists using us in 47 states and 26 countries which is wild um because we've been going for a little over two years um and so but we're always looking for you know what people are feel is important to them sure you know the feedback on that um and so yeah so that's what we're doing right now

that's awesome well You mentioned ASHA and AOTA.

See, this is the speechy in me.

I'm a dummy when it comes to not speech-related stuff.

APTA is so chill.

in the Evolve Living Collaborative School to get more appreciation of this context.

But what had happened in the United States is as soon as the American Medical Association was formalized in a similar way that something like the American Occupational Therapy Association could be formalized, is it came with criminalizing any of the folk medicinal practices, whether they were practiced by midwives, by indigenous elders.

The healthcare system was pretty ragtag across the United States, even as soon as the turn of the century.

However, with the installation of the American Medical Association, that came the landscape of academic gatekeeping.

All of that has to be taken into account.

And I know, in particular with Reiki, I think the American Occupational Therapy Association has recognized Reiki as a practice, as something that is Within the realm of doing occupational therapy.

So I think there's been that kind of integration piece as well, too, which really, I think, you know, reiterates their belief and their commitment to treating the whole person.

We use a lot of creativity in occupational therapy, you know, a lot of art therapy, a lot of play therapy, pretty much anything you can use when you're doing occupational therapy work.

Thank you for joining us on the OT Potential podcast.

To earn one hour of AOTA-approved continuing education for your time today, you will need to sign in or sign up at otpotential.com. Once you're in the OT Potential club, you will find a five-question post-course quiz connected to this episode.

When you pass the quiz with a score of 75% or higher, you will be able to download a PDF certificate that certifies your completion of this course.

Okay.

So this is really an important opportunity for PTs and PTAs to share their experiences and concerns.

We will be submitting comments on behalf of APTA like we do every year and will continue to collaborate with the American Occupational Therapy Association and the American Speech Language Hearing Association to fight for changes related to the fee schedule.

And most importantly, we provide you all with the tools that you need to advocate on behalf of the profession.

We've got the regulatory comment tool that Andrew covered at the top of the podcast, which allows you to customize your own comment letter using APTA's prompts.