OT Potential Podcast | Occupational Therapy CEUs

In the United States, therapy professionals are mostly educated in silos.

So it’s no wonder that when we get into the real world, we often struggle with interprofessional collaboration.

The answer is simple, and medicine, nursing, and pharmacy have already embraced it: interprofessional education.

But if this is the way forward, why has therapy been slow to adopt it? Will we lose our distinct value if we learn alongside other professions? Does it actually work, and if so, how do we measure that? And what does it look like in practice?

To answer these questions and more, I’m excited to welcome to the podcast Michael Sy, an OT researcher who writes and studies on exactly this topic.

We hope this conversation inspires you to think about how you collaborate across professions, and to see that it can begin with learning together.

See full course details here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/course/interprofessional-education

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At the heart of rehab therapy is often behavior change. That powerful lever is how therapy is able to deliver such long-term, life-altering results.

But let's be honest—it's also hard.

I know I, for one, have sat in a therapy office as a patient, pledging to do my home exercise program, and then totally failed to do it.

Motivational interviewing is an evidence-based approach that helps us get at the "why" behind what makes behavior change so difficult. It surfaces the real challenges so the therapist and patient can work through them together—and it gives us five specific skills to use in that process.

In today's one-hour course, we're joined by Sabina Kahn, PhD, EdD, OTD, MS, OTR/L. Sabina literally wrote the book on motivational interviewing for OT, PT, and SLP. Today, she'll share what she's learned, role-play MI in action, and help you start putting this process to work in your own practice.

See full course details here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/course/motivational-interviewing

See all OT CEU courses here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education

Check our our live webinar schedule here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/live-webinars

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As we've covered on the podcast, the world is heading toward a dementia crisis. The number of people living with dementia is projected to nearly triple by 2050, and low- and middle-income countries will be hit hardest.

But there is real hope for changing that trajectory: prevention.

The 2024 Lancet Commission estimates that nearly half of dementia cases could be prevented or delayed by addressing 14 modifiable risk factors, including hearing loss, hypertension, physical inactivity, and social isolation. And our guest's research points to something striking: nearly half of individual differences in Alzheimer's risk may be attributable to environmental influences, and his own study found that walkability, green space, and light pollution were linked to cognitive performance regardless of biomarker status.

In this course, we'll talk with Ganesh Babulal, PhD, OTD, MSCI, MOT, OTR/L, FAOTA, about addressing those risk factors, recognizing cognitive decline early, and whether early intervention can slow, or in some cases even reverse, decline.

We'll close with a vision for a team approach to care, where public data on environmental risk is synced into the EMR, physicians recognize risk earlier, and a therapy referral helps mitigate that risk before problems arise.

See full course details here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/course/risk-factors-for-cognitive-decline

See all OT CEU courses here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education

Check our our live webinar schedule here:
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More than 2.4 billion people around the globe live with a health condition that would benefit from rehabilitation, and more than 1 billion are living with a mental health condition. But how do they find the right therapist among the roughly 2.8 million OTs and PTs out there, not to mention SLPs and mental health professionals?

The answer is pretty obvious: marketing.

But in our busy clinical lives, we tend to overlook the importance of this business activity. And we certainly don't spend enough time thinking about how it could drive better outcomes. We know that therapeutic alliance is one of the main drivers of therapy outcomes. Yet we rarely think of marketing as the first step in helping a patient find the therapist who is right for them.

Luckily, there's some fascinating research out there to help us think about this overlooked therapy activity.

And I'm excited to welcome to the podcast Erica Stevens, MOTR/L, CLT, CHC, CYT, owner of Thrive OT. Erica built her practice from square one, selling a niche of therapy that really made her get clear about who it's for and what the benefits are.

Financial Disclosure: OT Potential is a Jane App affiliate and receives a commission when listeners purchase Jane App with our Jane App promo code: Potential. Jane App comes up in this course because our speaker uses it to run her practice. Jane App had no role in the content of this course. This relationship is also disclosed in the episode.

See full course details here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/course/marketing-your-therapy-practice

See all OT CEU courses here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education

Check our our live webinar schedule here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/live-webinars

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https://otpotential.com/blog/promo-code-for-medbridge

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For as long as I've been an OT, I've been hearing about occupational therapy's advocacy to be recognized as behavioral health providers.

This is frankly a little confusing, since OT has deep roots in mental health care — and many of us became OTs because of the unique way the profession holistically considers mental health and physical health, and how the two intersect in everyday function.

Things honestly become even more confusing when you start to dig into what exactly it means to be recognized as a behavioral health provider. What doors does that open to us? What is the current patchwork of states — and what is our desired future?

There is no better person to help us speak to these questions than Halley Read. Halley is the lead author on "Occupational Therapy: A Potential Solution to the Behavioral Health Workforce Shortage," published in Psychiatric Services in 2024.

Which gets at exactly the right question: why are we limiting the mental health workforce, when mental health workers are so desperately needed?

This course is intended for OTs, to help us understand this situation — but also for our fellow members of the healthcare team, to understand what OT can contribute and what policy changes would let us work in our full scope.

See full course details here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/course/ot-as-mental-health-providers 

See all OT CEU courses here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education

Check our our live webinar schedule here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/live-webinars

Support the show by using the OTPOTENTIAL Medbridge Code:
https://otpotential.com/blog/promo-code-for-medbridge

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On one hand, it truly feels like we are on track for health technology to transform healthcare as we know it.

On the other hand, we have to weigh the reality that many health tech solutions end up abandoned.

This is especially true of consumer-facing health tech. Some of the latest research shows that around 70% of users abandon health tech apps within 100 days.

Rehabilitation technology fares better — largely because of the clinician in the loop, who prescribes, fits, and supports the technology toward a defined therapeutic goal. But abandonment is still real: even with a clinician involved, one study showed roughly 10–30% of assistive rehab technology is abandoned,. Rates run higher for some device categories, like pediatric AAC devices that show 33% abandonment.

Fortunately, new research is emerging all the time on the factors that drive technology adoption — and, increasingly, structured frameworks to guide our decisions.

In today's course, we are excited to welcome Chris Gaskins, PhD, whose dissertation, "Mental Workload during Prosthetic Training" examined how cognitive demand shapes the way clients learn and adopt health tech. We'll hear how he is thinking about this whole landscape — and, most importantly, how he makes decisions with his clients at his outpatient neuro practice.

See full course details here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/course/rehab-tech-abandonment 

See all OT CEU courses here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education

Check our our live webinar schedule here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/live-webinars

Support the show by using the OTPOTENTIAL Medbridge Code:
https://otpotential.com/blog/promo-code-for-medbridge

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Healthcare has many challenges right now, but so many of them stem back to one looming global reality:

By 2050, the number of people on our planet over age 65 is projected to double. It’s almost hard to wrap your head around the financial impact, the caregiving demands, and just how profoundly this shift will alter society.

Luckily, the latest systematic research is crystal clear: to truly support aging in place, we need multidomain interventions that target the physical, cognitive, and social dimensions of healthy aging.

Even better? We already have a health workforce where multidomain care is our absolute specialty: hello, OT!

Unfortunately, we don't yet have widespread, turn-key business models to deliver this type of care at scale.

Today, we’re talking with Dawn Heiderscheidt, who is pioneering a career and a business in the aging-in-place arena. We’ll learn how she leverages her specialized OT skill set, makes the financials work, and provides much-needed care to her community.

See full course details here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/course/ot-and-aging-in-place 

See all OT CEU courses here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education

Check our our live webinar schedule here:
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Support the show by using the OTPOTENTIAL Medbridge Code:
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Over 53 million people in the U.S. provide unpaid caregiving services. That's a stunning 1 in 6 people.

The complex role of caregiving can entail everything from behavior management, symptom detection, and nutritional guidance to medication administration and transfer skills.

As you can imagine, insufficient caregiver training can lead to increased patient risks for safety and injury, worsening symptoms, loss of function, and higher healthcare utilization costs.

And for the caregivers themselves—unmet training needs are associated with higher anxiety, depression, burden, and lower self-esteem.

Prior to 2024, healthcare workers like OTs and PTs faced significant billing barriers because insurance required the patient to be present and actively participating during training. But in 2024, new Caregiver Training Service codes were introduced that every OT and PT needs to understand.

In this course, we'll look at these codes with dementia expert Rachel Wiley. We'll talk about what they entail, with a focus on how they can be implemented in practice. But we will also talk about their current limitations—and future directions for truly meeting the massive needs of caregivers and their patients.

See full course details here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/course/caregiver-training-codes 

See all OT CEU courses here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education

Check our our live webinar schedule here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/live-webinars

Support the show by using the OTPOTENTIAL Medbridge Code:
https://otpotential.com/blog/promo-code-for-medbridge

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The 2027 Physician Fee Schedule signals a continued restructuring of clinician payment-redistributing funds towards primary care and behavioral health while providing signals for what's coming next.

OTs and PTs can no longer sit on the sidelines. 

As straightforward, low-complexity care increasingly moves toward digital pathways and as patients increasingly access care through digital front doors, we must advocate that CMS properly values the high-value cognitive work and in-person, complex clinical reasoning and officially integrates therapy as the missing third pillar of the primary care team. 

This year's proposed rule is a critical opportunity to provide CMS solutions that can be met by OTs and PTs and advocate for key coding updates: reimbursing existing evaluation codes by complexity level and creating new non-time-based management codes to capture longitudinal care provided by occupational and physical therapists.

At OT Potential, we're equipping YOU to raise your voice. In this live webinar and course, we'll spend an hour unpacking the proposed rule, detailing our policy asks, and sharing a simple, plug-and-play comment template so you can submit your own letter to CMS. We'll be led by the incredible Dana Strauss, a doctor of physical therapy and healthcare public policy expert.

See full course details here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/course/medicare-advocacy-for-2027 

See all OT CEU courses here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education

Check our our live webinar schedule here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/live-webinars

Support the show by using the OTPOTENTIAL Medbridge Code:
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The latest clinical practice guideline for occupational therapy for autistic people across the lifespan urges us to shift away from deficit models toward neurodiversity-affirming, strengths-based care.

But, what does this look like in practice?

We know from the research that there are barriers at every level to delivering the type of support we aspire to- from rigid service silos to inconsistent legislation. 

That’s why I’m so excited today to welcome to the podcast someone who is charting a new way forward: Samantha Valasek, OTD, OTR/L Director of OT Services, at Spectrum Psych in LA. 

Samantha delivers OT services alongside psychotherapy and psychiatry to clients with autism, ADHD, anxiety, & mood concerns.

I can’t wait to hear from Samantha about what assessment, treatment, and interprofessional collaboration looks like in her day to day practice. 

And most importantly: what it looks like—both as individual practitioners and as a collaborative team—to deliver care that supports our clients in ways that are truly meaningful to them.

See full course details here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/course/neurodiversity-affirming-ot-for-adults 

See all OT CEU courses here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education

Check our our live webinar schedule here:
https://otpotential.com/continuing-education/live-webinars

Support the show by using the OTPOTENTIAL Medbridge Code:
https://otpotential.com/blog/promo-code-for-medbridge

Try 2 free OT Potential courses here:
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