Media Project Assignment

For my media project, I had to come up with an intervention or an adaptive device using newspaper/tissue paper that could help my client with Parkinson’s disease. My client’s name is Paula and she is a 76 year old woman who is retired from teaching history at a nearby college. Her main priorities for OT intervention are to be able to use her computer, communicate with her past colleagues and her husband, and be independent in ADLs such as daily bathing, dressing, and feeding. I went with the newspaper, and I think my “ah-ha” moment was when I realized that she had a lot of fine motor skills that needed to be worked on. There was plenty of ways to make an adaptive device to help with this, so I came up with a weighted holder for items such as forks, spoons, pens, pencils, etc. This will hopefully help lessen her intention tremors in her upper extremities as she's eating or writing. 

While doing this project, I felt accomplished in a sense that I was able to create something just from a rolled-up newspaper that could better help the life of a client. I have also learned that with a little creative thinking, a small object can go a long way for an activity or intervention. I learned that Parkinson’s disease can affect many different areas of life and can impair a lot of activities that once came easy to someone just with having tremors, let alone the other complications that come with this disease. This assignment has impacted my thinking for the future in that as long as you keep the client’s main priorities in mind, there’s a world of opportunities on how to help them achieve those goals. 

Here is a picture of the weighted fork below