Driving and Community Mobility Reflection

During today's driving and community mobility lecture, we learned a great deal about different assessments and interventions used to help a variety of different populations. Some of my main takeaways were how to administer different screenings that could be used to help assess someone's driving ability without putting them behind the wheel. This is something that a general OT without a driving certification could use to determine if a referral to a driving specialist might be in order. I also thought it was incredibly helpful to talk about functional deficits that can come from different diagnoses. This takes the focus away from a label a person might have and helps me to really think through how their condition might be impacting their function and how interventions can help with that. With driving specifically, I thought that the discussion we had about spinal cord injuries was particularly helpful since my second level 2 fieldwork will be in a spinal cord injury unit. I also thought it was really informative to be able to see different modifications both on the screen and in person, since part of our role as OTs will be to educate and train clients with any adaptive equipment that they have. Lastly, I thought that transfer practice was incredibly helpful, as it is something we have not recently done.

An individual intervention that could be good would be educating the client on their car modifications. Whether this was a seat, new controls, or extra mirrors, our job could be to help them adjust. Since most of us will not have a driving specialization for a bit after school, this could be something like educating them on how to transfer into the car, then having them bring it to the clinic so we could work on it. It could also mean generally discussing their modifications with them to see what they are having trouble with to determine if we can help them, or if they would need a driving specialist.

A good group intervention could be to work on sign recognition with older adults to ensure that they are being safe on the roads. This could be with adults with early stage Alzheimer's or low vision, and the goal could be to play a game where they match the shape and color of a sign with what it means. They could work together to play the game, and the OT could facilitate, while helping explain and review to educate the clients at the end of the session. This would not only help with safety awareness, but also would assess cognition and executive function.