Efficient and Effective Session Planning

 In this episode, we explore the art of session planning for Occupational Therapists working in unique settings such as animals and aquatics. Gina, an experienced OT, shares her journey and progression in session planning, emphasizing the importance of adapting interventions to the specific environment. She introduces the concept of "intervention themes" that streamline session planning, making it engaging and dynamic without sacrificing the therapist's well-being. Learn how to maximize the unique value of your setting and create transformative experiences for your clients. 

Transcript

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Hi, welcome to animals and aquatics. And thanks for listening. I'm Gina. I'm a mom. Occupational therapy, private practice owner. OT educator and OT coach. I pretty much live. And brief occupational therapy. And I'm excited. If you are an OT, that's working with animals and aquatics. Today, we're going to talk about something that's probably one of the most frequently asked questions that I get. And it's about intervention planning, especially for OTs who are new to this unique setting. They ask, how do I plan for sessions? And it's often one of the biggest burnout areas for OTs who have been working with animals or in the aquatic niche for a long time. Session planning begins to feel tedious and stale. So I really wanted to take some time and talk about session planning, give an overview of how we're doing session planning when working with animals or in the aquatics setting. As we get started with this episode, I'd like you to take a few moments and either write down or at least think about how are you currently session planning, no matter what setting you're in. If you're in. Clinical setting. If you were still a student and you're working on session planning and school. how are you doing session planning right now? What do you like most about session planning? When you're doing it currently. And what do you like least about it? So take a moment either write those things down. Or. Think about them, get some ideas in your head because I'm really curious to see if there's a way that our method might make that easier for you or capitalize on some of the things that you already love about session planning. It is one of those things that as an occupational therapist, we have to do, it's super important. That our session plans are appropriate for our client's goals and help move them forward. Step-by-step. So part of this is going to give you some ideas. And I want to tell you a little bit about my session planning and what that looked like. And I always share it with my field work students, because they feel like it's so important to see the progression. As a clinician in session planning. So when I first began session planning. I have session notes that were written with the client's name. What I was going to do for the first 10 minutes in the session, what I was going to do with the next 10 minutes in the session. What the activity would look like and what the cool-down would look like, what my pre and post would be. And I have those written out for each client each day. For every week. And I love to show these to students so they can see what my plan was for equine movement. What my plan was for the activity, how it was individualized for every single client, how many different sets of equipment or activities I would need to get out for my day. And just let them get an idea for that. Then I show them my next iteration, which came about six months later. My next iteration of session planning looked a little bit more like this. Thursday. And then it would list my client's names. And then under that it would list three or four different activities. And the goals that those activities would work on. Tuesday. And then it would list the client's names, the activities, and the goals that those would work on. So it was definitely a simplified format. It still had some of the same key features in that. It listed out specifically, which clients I was working on, what their goals were. What activities I would be pulling out to address those, but it didn't go into such a nuance about the equine movement that I was using. I had already integrated that into what I was doing. I didn't need to write it down anymore. I knew that I would adapt it on the fly anyway. And so I didn't need to write it down. And then I show them my session plans after about two years of being a clinician and working in the unique setting of using hippotherapy as my tool. And the session plans looked a little bit more like weekly plans. And so for this week I was going to incorporate these three different types of activities. And then for each activity I would list out upgrades downgrades and the goals that I could dress with those activities. So at this point, I was able to pull out specific activities, use those for multiple different clients, integrate the movement into that plan and transition that to my pre and post activities. So this was a major upgrade and certainly cut down on the amount of session planning I needed to do. And as I started to add in additional unique areas, like nature based or including goats and my OT sessions. You can see a little bit of a reversion to some of those earlier types of session planning, where I really needed to write down things more specifically. But I also had the ability to pull from my experience at that point. So after all these years, I think I finally found that happy, holy grail of intervention planning. That really allows me to keep it fresh without feeling time-consuming. I use intervention themes, and it's what I teach in the trailblazers quest program as well. It's a framework that provides specific activities that can be upgraded or downgraded or adapted for each of your different clients while only requiring one set of materials for three to four sessions. So it could last as long as a month. When we overlay this with our seasonal planning, which I talked about in our last episode, I'm sure you can see how you can keep it fresh without taking hours each week to plan sessions. And when we think about the fact that we don't get paid for our session planning. We only typically get paid for our direct intervention time. Whether that's at a clinic and your productivity standards are high enough that you're pretty busy. Most of the time, maybe you have a little bit of time for session planning. Or you're working as an independent contractor and you're only being paid for the clients that you see, or you're in private practice. And although you may have figured in some of your session planning time, Into your base rate, there's still not an additional rate that you're going to get into payment that you're going to get for session planning. So. It's great. If you can kind of go through your week and plan it out quickly, but for the weeks when you feel stuck, And things aren't moving along. There's you're not getting paid for that additional time. And that can certainly lead to frustration and burnout. The longer you've been in the field. And when you're new to the field, sometimes you just don't have a really good idea of what's available or what would make a good type of intervention to use. For the particular niche that you're in. When I was working with one newer clinician. An occupational therapist, she wanted to incorporate something with the horses that when we think about it might not sound like a bad idea at first, but looking at it a little bit more closely, it was definitely not a good idea. Her idea was a T-ball set up. And she thought that the clients could practice some hand-eye coordination. And that they'd be able to come over, swing the bat, hit the ball and, do some visual tracking with that. And although, again, it may seem like a good idea on the surface when we think a little bit more about adapting it for the unique setting of incorporating hippotherapy, we can definitely see some potential challenges of including horses, bats, balls, movement, altogether. And so ultimately this was an intervention that was not a good idea for the specific setting of incorporating horses into your OT session. So since we are in a unique niche of OT, I always want to make sure that I'm respecting that particular unique setting that I'm in. So whether that's with the horses at the stable. With the goats or in a nature based setting or in the pool. I want to ensure that I'm taking time to maximize the value of that setting. So if it's in the pool, I want to be highlighting the value of water and the special properties that water brings. Maybe like buoyancy or movement. And if I'm incorporating hippotherapy as my tool, I want to make sure that I'm incorporating and maximizing the value of movement. I don't want a lot of intervention or activity that's going to involve a lot of standing around. Movement is the key when I'm incorporating hippotherapy. And so I want to make sure that my interventions in that setting I incorporate a lot of movement. If I'm in a nature based setting, I want to incorporate the natural materials that are all around me. I don't want to be packing out a lot of toys into a nature based settings. So for each of those, I want to make sure that I'm really focusing on the value of that setting. So this really means that we can't just use the same resources that a school-based OT is going to use. So, if you Google occupational therapy intervention for autism, you might come up with a lot of great ideas, but most of them aren't going to be adapted for our unique setting. Even if some of them seem like they're going to be safe, not like table. They may not be appropriate and they're probably not going to highlight the unique value that our setting brings along. To our OT sessions. However we can adapt some of those same ideas and customize them to our unique settings. And we've already done that for our trailblazers quest members. Now, let me see if getting a little bit more specific would help you. Fall is a great time to use leaves as a theme. And we can do a lot of full activities in occupational therapy. Leaves are safe around a half horses and goats. Although the Leafs may leaves may not be safe from the goats. They love to eat them. And leaves her safe in the pool, as long as you scoop them out, when you're done. We can also laminate pictures of fall leaves to find. We can write OT specific goals on them. We can upgrade to using leaves to construct other projects or using them in pretend play. So, if you have a theme of leaves and 10 activity ideas to work with printouts, then you would still be able to customize them for each session each year or client to client. But you wouldn't need to spend hours each week with session planning. You could take one look at the theme. That provided activities that are already adapted to our unique settings and be ready to go and 10 to 20 minutes. Plus once you print and laminate the activities, you have the structure of an activity for years to come. That's one of the things I love about taking the time initially to create the materials, print them, laminate them, and then I know I can reuse them again and again. Now that we've created a filing system or a storage system to mark what the material is, what the theme is, where it's going to go, how it can be used. I know that next year I'll just come along, pull that out and be ready to go. I'll have fresh activities to go along with the materials, but the materials can stay the same. Honestly, I love this method of session planning. It saves us hours each week of thinking of an idea. Adapting them to the outdoors, to horses the pool, and then actually creating new materials. So, if you think back to what I asked at the beginning of this episode, What, how are you currently in session planning? What do you love most about it? And what do you like least about it? Have I hit on any of those areas? Have I hit on any of the challenges that you face with session planning? Because as we wrap up this episode, it's essential to reflect on the unique world of occupational therapy within niches, like animals and aquatics. We know that we're in a position to make a profound impact on our client's lives. And that's a responsibility that we don't take lightly. In these settings, we have the opportunity to create transformative experiences and provide interventions that are both effective and memorable. And the way that we design our intervention activities is part of that. What's even more exciting though, is the concept of intervention themes. And we found a way to do this without the constant need for time-consuming session planning. We've learned how to keep our sessions engaging and dynamic, making sure that our clients get the best possible OT without us feeling burnout. Our mission is to maximize the unique value of our setting. We don't just follow the path of school-based or clinical OTs or rely on the standardized resources available. Instead, we adapt, customize and create to ensure that our interventions are tailored precisely to our environment and the clients we serve. It's been creative and a fulfilling journey, and we're thrilled to have you on board. So as you continue your work in the world of animals and aquatics and occupational therapy. Remember that you are a trailblazer constantly pushing the boundaries of what's possible. Your commitment to delivering the best possible OT is what sets you apart. And with the innovative approach of intervention themes, you can provide unique, personalized interventions without sacrificing your own wellbeing. Thank you for joining us today and stay tuned for the next episode on thankfulness. Together, we'll keep making a difference and pioneering new horizons in the world of occupational therapy. Until next time.