Occupational Therapy News

Students in the News

MOT I student Amy Lemieux is presently (February 19th - 27th) serving with Healing Hands for Haiti International Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing rehabilitation medicine to Haiti. We look forward to learning more about her trip when she returns!   www.healinghandsforhaiti.org

Phi Theta Epsilon (PTE)

The occupational therapy honor society, Phi Theta Epsilon (PTE), once again welcomed new members this year. Phi Theta Epsilon officers are:

PTE is presently preparing for the annual induction ceremony for new members which takes place on Thursday, March 13, 2008 at 3:00. 

Student Occupational Therapy Association

The 2007-08 slate of SOTA officers is as follows:

SOTA Board Members 2007-2008

News from the Chair

Dr. Kate Hayner has been busy working with faculty to prepare for a visit from the Accreditation Council for Occupational Therapy Eduction March 3 - 5, 2008.

Synthesis Projects
Every year the second year students finish their two years with the culmination of research presented by the students formally to the rest of the class and faculty. This year the presentations will be on April  3, 2008 from 9:00 to 11:00 AM in the Fontaine Auditorium.

Professor Shea's research group 2006

Fieldwork
Again, the students are off to their Level I fieldwork, practicum assignments in various sites around the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Orange County, Oregon, and even Thailand. The Level II students will be located in and around the San Francisco Bay Area as well as returning home to Virginia or San Diego to complete their required fieldwork. We wish them well!

Faculty Activities

The OT faculty are busy with many scholarly and service-related endeavors while at the same time pursuing excellence in teaching activities to maintain the high standards of the program.

Dr. Kate Hayner Dr. Hayner is one of several faculty teaching  a new elective course "The Interdisciplinary Team--Improving the Care of Our Elders.  This is a course that Kate Hayner (OT) and Sharon Gorman (PT), have assist to develop with multiple faculty from UC Berkeley, UCSF, and other local colleges/universities, over the past 1.5 years. Students in the course represent a variety of health care disciplines including PT, OT, public health, social work, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, optometry, and others.  The course is taught by faculty with the same variety of backgrounds and from different campuses. 

Dr. Gordon Giles Dr. Giles has recently been working with Dr. Jonathan Rogers of Ashworth Hospital in the UK.  Ashworth is one of the Three very high security forensic psychiatric hospitals in the UK and works with very dangerous cognitively impaired offenders.  Dr. Giles Is to present in October of 2008 on this work in Liverpool, UK.  Use of non-aversive programatic interventions pioneered by Dr Giles have lead to signiicant decreases in assaultive behavior, staff absences from injury, and have lead to improvements in patients behavior significant enough to allow a number of patients to transfer to less secure environments. Dr. Giles was recently on a panel convened to assist the Department of Defense allocate congressionally appropriated grant monies to research consortiums engaged in research to protect injured service people. Armed Services personnel are exposed to blast related traumatic brain injury (TBI)  from improvised explosive devices.  Sixty percent of all injured service people returning from Iraq for treatment have had a TBI and forty percent of all front line service people have been exposed to blast TBI.  Gordon Muir Giles of Samuel Merritt College was recently invited to Washington DC To assist in the selection of innovative research programs to be funded by the department of defense.  Based on his research in TBI Dr. Giles was invited to be on the scientific panel involved in deciding which of 36 multidisciplinary research consortium proposals were to be funded.  The panel was international and included members Walter Reed and premier national research institutions.  The monies to be awarded are part of a congressionally mandated research program and total 150 million Dollars this year.

Professor Donna Breger Stanton Professor Breger Stanton attended the California Academic Fieldwork Coordinators meeting which took place at Sacramento City college with excellent attendance of representatives from the OT programs in California.  Discussions include topics such as mandatory health requirements by the fieldwork sites, update about medicare regulations that may affect fieldwork, and discussion of more collaboration between programs for review of paperwork requirements needed such as fieldwork objectives and weekly schedules prepared for Level I and Level II students.  Professor Breger Stanton continues to be involved in ASHT (American Society of Hand Therapists). She is serving as Vice-chair of ASHT annual conference, which takes place in Boston, Oct 23 - 26, 2008 and Chair ASHT in September 2009, which is combined with the American Society for Surgery of the Hand annual meeting. Additionally, Professor Breger Stanton is a delegate for La Federation de Mano of North and Central Americas for hand surgeons and therapists.  She is leading a multi-center IRB approved project to learn about the effectivess of contrast baths.  A new project with first year students is in process of designing a survey of the inclusion of thermal agent modalities and electrical modalities in occupational therapy curriculum, based on new educational standards implemented 2008.