Developing Clinical Competence: A Workbook for the OTA

by Marie Morreale

Overview

A newly updated, user-friendly resource for occupational therapy assistant students and new practitioners, Developing Clinical Competence: A Workbook for the OTA, Second Edition assists readers in developing practical problem-solving and “‘real-life”’ skills essential for fieldwork and clinical practice. Maintaining the easy-to-read workbook format from the First Edition, this book is filled with learning activities, worksheets, and detailed answer explanations, as well as expanded chapter content and revised references.

Marie J. Morreale breaks down competencies into step-by-step units to allow for independent study. With multiple choice, matching, true/false, and fill-in-the-blanks questions; case studies; vignettes; and experiential activities, this Second Edition presents helpful tips in their most useful format. Guiding the reader through occupational therapy clinical decision making, professional conduct, and meeting standards of care for various practice areas, each chapter is fully independent and can be read in the order most conducive to the reader’s individual learning needs. This text can help readers measure attainment of knowledge and skills when preparing for fieldwork, the national certification exam, or transitioning to entry-level practice.

New for the Second Edition:

• Fundamental topics including effective communication, assessment of client function, safety, supervision, documentation, group process, and department management
• Additional questions regarding behavioral health and pediatric practice
• Expanded content for professionalism, ethics, cultural sensitivity, and interventions to support occupations
• Topics such as wheeled mobility, hand function development, infection control, feeding/eating, wound care basics, quality improvement, and more
• Added content regarding the American Occupational Therapy Association documents, evidence-informed practice, advocacy, chronic conditions, and new trends
• Incorporated concepts and principles from the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework: Domain and Process, Fourth Edition

Instructors in educational settings can also visit www.efacultylounge.com for additional instructional resources. 

Addressing fundamental areas of occupational therapy practice for a wide variety of conditions, situations, and practice settings, Developing Clinical Competence: A Workbook for the OTA, Second Edition includes helpful hints and practical clinical tips to help the OTA implement appropriate interventions and communicate more effectively.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781630918965
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/15/2021
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	454
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Marie J. Morreale, OTR graduated Summa Cum Laude from Quinnipiac College (now Quinnipiac University) with a B.S. in occupational therapy. Throughout her professional career, Marie worked in a variety of practice settings, including inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation, skilled nursing facilities, adult day care, home health, cognitive rehabilitation, and hand therapy. Marie held the designation of Certified Hand Therapist for 25 years. She also served several years on a home health professional advisory committee, consulting on quality assurance issues. Marie was adjunct faculty for 17 years at the Occupational Therapy Assistant Program at Rockland Community College, State University of New York in Suffern. There she taught a variety of courses, including Professional Issues and Documentation, Geriatric Principles, Occupational Therapy Skills, Advanced Occupational Therapy Skills, Therapeutic Activities, and Advanced Therapeutic Activities. Marie was also involved with OTA curriculum development and served briefly as interim coordinator of the OTA Program. 

Marie created the first edition of Developing Clinical Competence: A Workbook for the OTA. She also co-authored The Occupational Therapist’s Workbook for Ensuring Clinical Competence and the second, third, and fourth editions of The OTA’s Guide to Documentation: Writing SOAP Notes. In addition, she wrote a chapter on documentation for The Occupational Therapy Manager, Fifth Edition and published several occupational therapy articles. For the past several years Marie has been a test item writer for American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) continuing education products. She is active in her condo community and enjoys anything travel related.

Table of Contents

Dedication
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Introduction
 
 
Chapter 1            Communicating Effectively
 
Chapter 2            Demonstrating Professionalism
 
Chapter 3            Understanding Professional Roles and Responsibilities
 
Chapter 4            Implementing Preparatory Interventions
 
Chapter 5            Incorporating Activities and Occupations
 
Chapter 6            Developing Knowledge and Skills for Different Practice Settings
 
Chapter 7            Assessing and Documenting Client Function
 
Chapter 8            Incorporating Fundamentals of Care
 
 
Index

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: Abigail Swidergal, MS, COTA/L(Pima Medical Institute)
Description: This book covers many intangible topics that are relevant to the practice of occupational therapy and provides practical application practice. A vast array of important topics are covered such as communication skills and professionalism, occupation-based interventions across a variety of practice settings, documentation, and group leadership. The worksheets and learning activities set this book up as a valuable resource for students and new practitioners. The ability to apply the information and check for accuracy given the answer keys in each chapter provides ample practice and application of knowledge. The first edition was published in 2014, so there was a need for updated information as far as official documents, billing and coding changes, and language congruency with the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework, 4th Edition (OPTF-4).
Purpose: The introduction provides clear direction on how to use the book as a workbook including the practicality of concepts to application of information. The book allows for progressive building of skills or stand-alone chapters to be used as silos for specific topics. The book encourages active learning via the integration of role-playing exercises, study groups, or how to infuse into fieldwork experiences. While best-practice scenarios are provided, it is noted that clinical reasoning must be used in all real-life experiences. The book can be very useful within an OTA program to support meeting ACOTE standards, but also by putting specific examples to clinical competence. The guiding principles come from the American Occupational Therapy Association, and all documents are the most current. The book aims to meet learning gaps noted in the author's academic experience, and it covers a vast array of content needed in entry-level practice.
Audience: This book is written for students and new graduates of OTA programs. The book is written for an audience that already has basic content knowledge to express clinical reasoning skills in relation to the level of understanding expected at this level. The author has extensive clinical practice as an occupational therapist leading to an expertise in clinical reasoning, as well as 17 years as adjunct faculty in an OTA program, giving her good insight to the needs of this population. She has written other publications, including the first edition of this book and other occupational therapy and occupational therapy assistant textbooks, giving her credibility as an authority in this role.
Features: This book is unique to the profession, in that it is based in occupational therapy practice and written specifically to an OTA student and new graduate audience to use the content knowledge they should already have and apply it to what they may see in fieldwork or entry-level practice. It outlines strategies to communicate with clients, their care partners, and within intra- and interprofessional teams. Opportunities to practice the language that can be used to facilitate best-practice outcomes are provided to the instructor and learner in the worksheets and learning activities. Often the move from didactic to fieldwork portions of academic programs can bring stress, but this book does a clear job of reminding early practitioners how to apply that book knowledge with scenarios that likely will occur. It connects the hours of studying basics to how they may use it in practice by reviews of the core concepts of the profession, examples of using occupation as interventions and outcomes, and considering how to document all the ideas. Each concept is provided in brief content, but each chapter provides ancillary learning activities that apply the ideas to a picture of practice. There is plenty of development of each skill within each chapter, along with the key so students and new graduates can check their own work, reflect on their observations and situation, and adjust their reasoning as needed. The second edition is up to date with current documents from AOTA and uses the terminology to match throughout. Inclusion of behavioral health and pediatric content in this edition is basic but gives an over-arching view of these settings. New topics that cross settings and populations are also included, and expansion on topics from the first edition support more current language and best practices for today's clinicians. There is no way to cover every population and setting that may receive occupational therapy services, nor every scenario that could possibly happen to a clinician. These topics can be used in a generalized sense in most cases. It is always best to err on the side of caution, and that is shown in this book. When considering the roles of OTAs, it could be noted to practice to the top of your scope of practice, rather than depending on historical use of OTAs within a specific practice setting. It is best practice to advocate for oneself and one's role and to understand limitations and parameters to the role given by legislation or payors.
Assessment: To my knowledge, there is no other book like this. It could be incredibly useful for reflective students and new grads to help create their confidence in their clinical reasoning skills and their value as new practitioners, providing many examples, offering lots of practice in different areas, and showing progress with skills throughout. The quality offered in this book is unique to the skills discussed. The format is very similar to The OTA's Guide to Documentation: Writing SOAP Notes, 5th Edition, Morreale (Slack Incorporated, 2022), which could provide familiarity and comfort to students and new graduates whose programs utilize that book as well. I would only prefer to see all the keys together at the end of the book, as they are placed at the end of each chapter in this format. The new edition is absolutely warranted, given the five-year review cycle at AOTA for documents and the updated OTPF-4. The reliance this book has on current information certainly required an updated version from 2014 due to changes in policies, official documents, and current terminology.

Doody's Review Service

The best features of this book are the use of a wide variety of clinical scenarios and the way they are blended seamlessly with professional behaviors.  It demonstrates how to treat patients holistically, an aspect that I particularly appreciate…I love this book – I find it very useful."

- Kay Blose, MOT, OTR/L, University of Charleston-Beckley, Doody’s Review Service

From the Publisher