Connections In Healthcare

By David F. Garner OTR/L Nancy was a 74-year-old female who had a total left hip replacement. During the first few sessions of occupational therapy at the skilled nursing facility, her participation in therapy was greatly limited by 8-9 out of 10 pain. She refused sessions because of pain. She was taking the maximum doses of pain medicine and due to other issues, was unable to take muscle relaxers. After an assessment, I determined much of her pain was due to muscle tightness and cramps in her thigh and low back secondary to post-surgical guarding reaction.  In our third session, I tried our vibrating massager to see if that would relieve her pain. After 10 minutes of vibration set to 60 Hz, her pain decreased from 9/10 to 4/10. She then participated more easily in dressing tasks. For each subsequent session when her pain was high, she was brought to the gym a few minutes early and used the vibrating massager on herself. Sometimes, she would stay after and continue treating herself...

  Triangle Breathing for Relaxation Deep Breathing is a well-known tool that can help calm your mind, lower heart rate, and reduce stress. For a more in-depth article see this  link . A lot of research has been done around this psychobiological hack. Here is a brief review of some of the literature.  1. "Psychological/behavioral outputs related to the above mentioned [physiological] changes are increased comfort, relaxation, pleasantness, vigor and alertness, and reduced symptoms of arousal, anxiety, depression, anger, and confusion." - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137615/ 2. "Students reported having perceptions of decreased test anxiety, nervousness, self-doubt, and concentration loss..." - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10401330701366754   The problem with the term deep breathing is its ambiguity. The technique explained here attempts to rectify that. This method will provide a simple approach that is easy to remember, and e...

        Nature-based Therapeutic Media In Occupational Therapy David F. Garner Tennessee State University A Graduate Research Project                 Author’s Note David F. Garner, Department of Health Science, Tennessee State University. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to David Garner, Department of Occupational Therapy, Tennessee State University,  3500 John A Merritt Blvd, Nashville, TN 37209. Contact: dgarnerotr@gmail.com Abstract This paper explores how a therapeutic task involving nature-based media will affect mood and compliance compared to a traditional occupational therapy treatment. Three separate groups of subjects completed a similar task that involved a therapeutic exercise. Subjects were adults of any sex, aged 50 or over. The first group completed a task that involved interacting with live nature-based medium in the form of plants. The second interacted with pictures of nature. Th...