Dancing around the hexaflex: Using ACT in practice 2
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) can be slippery to describe. It’s an approach that doesn’t aim to change thought content, but instead to help us shift the way we relate to what our mind tells us. It’s also an approach focused on workability: pragmatic and context-specific analysis of how well a strategy is working to achieve being able to do what matters. Over the next few posts I want to give some examples of how non-psychologists (remember ACT is open for anyone to use it!) can use ACT in session.
Self as context
From my experience, this process is possibly the least well understood of the ACT hexafle...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - August 27, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: ACT - Acceptance & Commitment Therapy Chronic pain Coping strategies Pain conditions Professional topics Science in practice acceptance and commitment therapy Clinical reasoning Occupational therapy Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
Dancing around the hexaflex: Using ACT in practice 1
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) can be slippery to describe. It’s an approach that doesn’t aim to change thought content, but instead to help us shift the way we relate to what our mind tells us. It’s also an approach focused on workability: pragmatic and context-specific analysis of how well a strategy is working to achieve being able to do what matters. Over the next few posts I want to give some examples of how non-psychologists (remember ACT is open for anyone to use it!) can use ACT in session.
Mindfulness – messing about with attention
Thanks to Kevin Vowles, I’m adopting t...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - August 20, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: ACT - Acceptance & Commitment Therapy Back pain Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Coping strategies Low back pain Occupational therapy Physiotherapy Psychology Research Resilience Resilience/Health Science in practice mindful movem Source Type: blogs
Globalization and occupation therapy - a continued musing.
I have been talking about the implications of globalization on the occupational therapy profession for quite some time - it started off withblog posts here and then apresentation at OT24VX in 2015. Then I gave the topic a whole chapter inmy theory textbook in 2019. Then there were more blog postshereandhere.In sum, I am uncertain if occupational therapy is a unitary global profession, although I now add this caveat:at least as understood in the publications of academics. I add this caveat now because I am uncertain if the things that people in academia write about truly reflects actual practice in oth...
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - August 10, 2023 Category: Occupational Health Source Type: blogs
Clinical indications for hypnosis
Who might benefit from learning hypnosis – and when might you suggest it?
I’m a person who doesn’t really try changing my own pain intensity very often, and most of the people I’ve worked with in therapy are also in the stage of wanting to learn how to live alongside their pain. However, there are some times when modulating pain intensity can be a really helpful part of even this phase of learning to live well with pain.
I haven’t found any clinical guidelines suggesting when it might be good to introduce hypnosis, so this is my own clinical reasoning. Remember I work with a particular g...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - August 6, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Coping Skills Coping strategies Resilience/Health Science in practice Clinical reasoning hypnosis Occupational therapy self-hypnosis Source Type: blogs
Environmental sustainability and occupational therapy practice, revisited.
Please go here formy first thoughts on sustainability in occupational therapy around ten years ago.I received an email from a colleague who has been an advocate and published author on this topic asking me if I had the opportunity to revisit my thoughts on sustainability and occupational therapy.In fact I have continued to think about this, so I thought I would document my response here.Hi XXXXX- Thanks for reaching out. I have previously and still believe that the study of climate change itself should remain within the purview of climate scientists. It seems to me that when it is co-opted by distal groups (incl...
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - July 28, 2023 Category: Occupational Health Source Type: blogs
New! Awesome! Better! (Learning a new approach)
With all the attention being given to cognitive functional therapy (and deservedly so, IMHO) it’s tempting to leap aboard the modality train and go take a course, isn’t it?
Although I’ve picked on CFT today, it could just as easily have been any of the New! Awesome! Better! therapies that hit the clinical headlines on a frequent basis. The temptation to go “Look! Shiny!” and learn about the latest thing isn’t confined to teenagers following some social media trend. Yup, even sober-sides nearly 60-year-olds like me still want to go on learning, getting better at what I do, keeping up w...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - May 21, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Clinical reasoning Education/CME Occupational therapy Physiotherapy Professional topics Psychology Research Science in practice biopsychosocial healthcare Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
Pain Concepts for Practice: Occupational therapists
Enrolments open again for this online course with THREE live Zoom discussions!
This course is specifically developed for occupational therapists and gives you:
an overview of the THREE groups of pain mechanisms and a way through the neurobiology maze
what pain mechanisms mean when working with people experiencing pain
the weird and uncertain influence of pain on daily life
pain behaviours and how these can get in the way of doing what matters to a person
pain assessments and what they mean
sensory approaches for people living with pain
graded desensitising and graded exposure – how they are n...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - May 18, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Learning ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy)
Around 2001 I read what I believe is the first randomised controlled trial of ACT for people living with chronic pain (McCracken, 1998). I quickly dived into this ‘new’ therapy – it appealed to me because it resonated with my own experiences with psychological therapies for depression, and in the way I had learned to live alongside my own pain. For those who don’t know, I developed chronic pain around the age of 22ish (dates are hard to remember!) and after seeing a pain specialist was given those fateful words ‘I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do from a medical perspective.’...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - May 14, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: 'Pacing' or Quota ACT - Acceptance & Commitment Therapy Chronic pain Motivation Occupational therapy Pain conditions Physiotherapy Professional topics Psychology Research Science in practice acceptance and commitment therapy Therap Source Type: blogs
Why I ’ m not fazed by unremarkable results in therapy trials
Remember the old ‘pareto principle’? 80% of the results come from 20% of the input, or as Wikipedia informs me, “the principle of factor sparsity”
I think we’ve got there with musculoskeletal pain, especially low back pain.
The other ‘law’ that might apply is that of diminishing returns.
We’ve learned a great deal about low back pain over my clinical career. We’ve essentially learned what not do to. In the name of progress, thousands of people have put their pain (their bodies) on the line. And progress has not exactly been great right? We’ve learned tha...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - May 7, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Back pain Low back pain Occupational therapy Pain conditions Physiotherapy Professional topics Research Science in practice healthcare Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
“ … someone needs to find the cause of my pain, then fix it. ” What to do with sticky beliefs
I think most clinicians, and certainly a lot of people living with pain, want to know ‘what’s going on’ – with the hope that, once identified, ‘something’ can be done. Tricky stuff to navigate both as a person living with pain, and as a clinician – because for so many chronic pains, a diagnosis does very little.
Having a label has some benefits, for sure: it acts as a short-hand when talking about what’s going on with others; it can validate that the mysterious problems a person has been having are ‘real’ (though I could say more about that!); it can help peop...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - April 30, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: ACT - Acceptance & Commitment Therapy Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Coping strategies Occupational therapy Physiotherapy Professional topics Psychology Research Science in practice biopsychosocial pain management Therapeutic appr Source Type: blogs
Occupational therapy under pressure: workforce survey findings 2022 –2023
This report finds that the occupational therapy (OT) workforce is under pressure due to increased demand coupled with workforce shortages. It outlines concerns that this is challenging OTs ’ capacity to provide essential support to people whose lives are impacted by long-term health conditions and disability. It makes several recommendations including building capacity within primary and community health and social care services, to ensure people receive advice and help early on. It also recommends that investment in the OT workforce must be matched to service and demographic need, not just in the NHS but also in social ...
Source: Health Management Specialist Library - April 28, 2023 Category: UK Health Authors: The King ' s Fund Library Tags: Workforce and employment Source Type: blogs
On not being a arse
Humans are judgemental beings. All of us are. It’s part of having a big brain and wanting to know who’s ‘in’ and who’s ‘out’. Judgements help us make decisions, they’re surprisingly resistant to change, and they can inadvertently trap us into doing things we would never countenance were we able to stand back from what our minds want us to know (and feel).
My post today is prompted by a couple of conversations recently. One was with a clinician, new to a pain team, who found that experienced members of that team thought actions taken by a person with pain were a sign of ...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - April 2, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Coping strategies Interdisciplinary teams Occupational therapy Physiotherapy Professional topics Psychology Research Science in practice healthcare pain management Source Type: blogs
On not being an arse
Humans are judgemental beings. All of us are. It’s part of having a big brain and wanting to know who’s ‘in’ and who’s ‘out’. Judgements help us make decisions, they’re surprisingly resistant to change, and they can inadvertently trap us into doing things we would never countenance were we able to stand back from what our minds want us to know (and feel).
My post today is prompted by a couple of conversations recently. One was with a clinician, new to a pain team, who found that experienced members of that team thought actions taken by a person with pain were a sign of ...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - April 2, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Coping strategies Interdisciplinary teams Occupational therapy Physiotherapy Professional topics Psychology Research Science in practice healthcare pain management Source Type: blogs
Empowering Stroke Survivors: Interview with Kirsten Carroll, General Manager at Kandu Health
Kandu Health, a digital health company based in California, has developed a platform to assist stroke survivors with aftercare. Healthcare for stroke patients is primarily focused on acute care to limit the damage caused by the stroke. However, the company has identified that stroke survivors are frequently underserved after hospital discharge, and in many cases are left to cope with the psychological and physical fallout of the stroke with minimal support.
The e-health platform developed by Kandu Health connects stroke survivors with specialists who provide them, and their caregivers, with personalized guidance, educat...
Source: Medgadget - March 20, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Exclusive Neurology Rehab kanduhealth stroke rehab Source Type: blogs
Empowering Stroke Survivors: Interview with Kirsten Carroll, CEO at Kandu Health
Kandu Health, a digital health company based in California, has developed a platform to assist stroke survivors with aftercare. Healthcare for stroke patients is primarily focused on acute care to limit the damage caused by the stroke. However, the company has identified that stroke survivors are frequently underserved after hospital discharge, and in many cases are left to cope with the psychological and physical fallout of the stroke with minimal support.
The e-health platform developed by Kandu Health connects stroke survivors with specialists who provide them, and their caregivers, with personalized guidance, educat...
Source: Medgadget - March 20, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Exclusive Neurology Rehab kanduhealth stroke rehab Source Type: blogs
