From Episode 1 of the Therapeutic Recreation Talk Show with Hawke Robinson


Video source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkVFW75vXLs 

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hello and welcome to the TR talk-show the therapeutic recreation and

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recreation therapy show for discussion about all the topics related to TR and

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RT this is episode number one August 20th 2019 we're hoping in the future

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hopefully sooner rather than later we will be adding co-hosts and special guests to the show we wanted to go ahead

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and get the ball rolling and get things started because the you know momentum is so important and we're still getting the

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such and a brand new microphone so hopefully the audio isn't too far off

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and it is the first time streaming this show on the RPG therapeutics channel

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which doesn't yet have a dedicated URL we have to get to a certain number of followers etc before YouTube will allow

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us to create a dedicated name but hopefully we'll be able to get that fairly soon

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so unfortunately channel URL is not easy to find the best thing is to go to TR

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talk-show comm and there's a link there to watch the live streams so this show

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is live every one every Tuesday at 1:00 p.m. Pacific time and initially the show

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will probably only be 20 30 45 minutes but we hope to eventually get up to a full hour in content and maybe even

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sometimes go a little over if we're covering some detailed content or have a number of special guests and such so

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this show will cover therapeutic recreation news and and TR in the news

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licensing updates of state-by-state any progress being made in those areas

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either state by state or federally job openings of note won't be every job

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opening but when we see something that catches our eye and people want us to kind of maybe maybe help spread the word out we're happy to do so theory

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discussion we will cover a lot of relevant theories related to

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role-playing excuse me to therapy recreation I should let you know I'm founding president of RPG research

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and RPG therapeutics RPG research is a non-profit 501c3 researching human

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services organization studying the effects of all role-playing game formats and the potential of improve lives and

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RPG therapeutics is a professional for-profit professional services organization and providing recreation

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therapy music and role-playing games and other services so sometimes I

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inadvertently will say RPG when I mean TR and TR meeting RPG because both of

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those businesses are built heavily on the TR models and methodologies and

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theories and so a lot of the role-playing game theory and such is tr

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greatly informs enhancing the role-playing game experience and so pardon me if I sometimes accidentally

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slip in the RPG think we have the RPG talk show and we broadcast through RPG research half a dozen or more times a

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week plus we run multiple community programs every week and so I used the word RPG a lot and so pardon me if I

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accidentally slipped those and I'll try to make a keep it clean but I already slipped that up so you can comment on

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the stream when we're live so at when you go to TR talk-show comm and click to

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the live stream when the show is running you can go ahead and comment in the chat room I have a big screen up here where I

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can see your comments and I can respond to them or after it's a recorded archive

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you can post comments through YouTube and we'll try to answer your questions

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on the following show we'll try to keep an eye open for those you can also email

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RPG therapeutics at gmail.com eventually we'll have a separate email for the TR

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talk-show but we're still getting all that set up again this is episode 1 I don't have any special guests or

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co-hosts yet I kind of have a build it and they will come approach to things I've done that for decades with multiple

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businesses and it's worked out pretty well it is a momentum thing we get things started word slowly spreads

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and things grow from there so news licensing job openings theories

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methodologies also we'll try to do some occasional PR program and TRS spotlight

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so we'll we'll hopefully focus on a specific program somewhere in the world or a specific or specific therapeutic

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recreation specialist somewhere in the world who is doing something either towards advocacy or innovation in TR and

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then as I said hopefully we'll have some coasts and special guests over time to bring on here it's always much more

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interesting instead of a single person listening to me go on to have a dialogue and interjection from co-hosts and so if

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we can get one or two other co-hosts at least here probably remote but you never know we've got quite a few rec therapist

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here in Spokane Washington where I'm based Eastern Washington University has an excellent TR program run by Professor

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Emily Messina who's very active in the TR community she's been president of the Washington State therapeutic recreation

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association I'll probably be asking her to come out and and speak on the show either remotely or in person at least as

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a guest she's probably has way too busy a schedule to be a regular co-host I think

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she's on 14 different boards or some one of one of my other employees was telling

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me so but we'll definitely have to get her out here as a local either remoting

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in or in the studio and then also we'll mention any conventions or special events or webinars that are of note and

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certainly CEUs things like that I have been in the healthcare industry on and

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off since about 1989 90 right around there as a nurse's aide a habilitation

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therapist LPN trainee and a few other

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roles over the years and then in 2004 focused on music and recreation therapy

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neuroscience and research psychology and so that's that's been my background since 2004 and then I found a bit of a

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niche using various role-playing games because nobody in TR been doing it and all of the textbooks say we need more

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intrinsically motivated cooperative activities that are inclusive and

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accessible for more populations because everything's so competitive and and I

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kept saying I wonder if role-playing games and so it started the whole RPG research thing you know for though I've

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been researching those effects since 83 we are going to be speaking at the

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upcoming atra conference in Reno they are kind enough to have accepted

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all three of our proposals and then request that we do a full-day workshop

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on the Saturday the first day September 14th in Reno Nevada and so from 8:30

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a.m. to 5:00 p.m. anybody who wants to learn about role-playing games the research the

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history application to specific populations and specific facilities

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we've applied it in recreation education entertainment and therapeutic settings wide range of populations from 2 years

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old to people well into their senior years autism spectrum brain injury muscular dystrophy and many others we're

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gonna be covering that in that all-day workshop W lots of hands-on experience and then for those who can't make that

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workshop we're also signed up to do several webinars it's gonna be a little interesting logistically but there'll be

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three of us down there my so Hawk problems are myself and then John Welker

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vice-president of RPG research and Daniel Whitworth who's the treasurer for RPG research and both long time

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volunteers there and also employees at RPG therapeutics LLC and so we'll also

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be doing a webinar that Saturday briefly from the 10:00 a.m. to noon spot for

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those who missed the morning session and then Sunday we'll be doing a webinar

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from those who may not be able to make the afternoon session of that Saturday and then Tuesday we'll do a final

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session for those who missed the very end of that first Saturday session so the first one covers the introduction to

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the history myths and research sec-1 covers that

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application a third one's about professional development so you have foundational knowledge and professional development and such there and then also

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in practice so that that's what we have coming up will be there with the wheelchair-accessible RPG bus and

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wheelchair-accessible RPG trailer prototypes and talking about that and accessibility and mobile facilities for

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TR practice across the country so I hope you'll get a chance to if you

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can make it a try or tune in to the webinars hope you'll join us and join the conversation we look forward to it

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this isn't the show is not about meant to be self promotional thing but I want at least give a foundation for this

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first episode of who I am and what we're associated with and such and you can

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learn more about me and my practice at h8 wke Robinson hawk Robinson comm if

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you want to see a quick summary there or you can get more details about RPG therapeutics LLC at RPG therapy comm and

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then about RPG research the 501 C 3 non-profit at RPG research comm you

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learn more about the bus at RPG bus comm and the trailer an RPG trailer calm and the tour across the country at RPG tour

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tou are.com see a trend here so again

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this will be a fairly short session we will be from time to time I have a fairly large library of TR related books

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got me high csikszentmihalyi's collected works of many many many of his

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works I've got all the way back to the avid on interaction patterns the original Abaddon book which was a little

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bit tricky to track down but I'd like going to primary sources curse we have the red book with all these wonderful assessment tools we're using the blue

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book for all the ICF ICD World Health Organization codes that's a little bit

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dated so now there's the newer versions of those I have those we of course the cook book on program plan development

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all all these over and professor to till O's actually we got multiple versions on

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therapeutic recreation facilitation techniques from the East Coast and the west coast and we will from time to time

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be talking from these books because all of us who are out there in the field working and

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such it's always good for us to kind of refresh in fact you know some of our staff are going through the CTRs process

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and getting ready to take the test so we have another broadcast that we do that specifically just prepping for the test

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literally whipping out the flashcards and such and then discussing the topics a little more in depth so we've got a

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for example these are some of the NCT RCC TRS study cards now I have to say

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these ones that are these punch outs from let's see this is you can get these

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on Amazon it's from mometrix mometrix media flashcard secrets.com /nc GRC I

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have to say these are actually really terrible as far as flashcards go and from the neuroscience and learning perspective they are so poorly created

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we're gonna have to recreate these completely to make decent versions because so has a decent prompt question

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but look at the answer its paragraphs that is not how you use flashcards and

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that's certainly not how neuroscience shows that people learn best so what we do is we use these for discussion we

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these typically should be about anywhere from three to ten cards any one of these cards should be broken in about three to

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a dozen cards and we may try to do that over time to maybe put something out

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that's actually useful now there is another version I have on my Kindle I gotta take a look at and see if it's any better but for example and normally we

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do this on Sundays from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. so you're welcome to join that that's

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over on the RPG research stream because that's for our volunteers and training and such as opposed to this RPG

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therapeutic stream but we might do one of these especially while I'm waiting to build up guests and co-hosts we can just

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bring up these topics just and you know help refresh and a little bit of its dated to some of the NC TRC requirements

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you know they're getting updated and such but they're a little outdated based on the latest neuroscience and research

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psychology and some of the terminologies is quite dated so I will point those out

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when I come across those but here's one just grabbed at random this is assessment process summarize some

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information an assessment instrument that evaluates functional skills related to receiving

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and benefiting from TR /rt services and one that assesses functional abilities

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for daily living activities now this is a great opportunity to pull out the red book of course but let's see what the

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answer is that it recommends for the CTRs yet looking at the tiny print

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paragraphs you're supposed to somehow memorize the functional assessment of

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characteristics for therapeutic recreation revised FAC TR factor Peterson Dunn and Carruthers 1983 factor

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- our revised by Burlingame was originally designed for adult VA hospital patients including those

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receiving acute hospitalization rehabilitation psychiatric geriatric and

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other services ok I think it's just one

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of many examples you could potentially come up with for daily living but this is what they have for the flash card it

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is applicable to most populations for use as an initial screening instrument its purpose is to assess basic

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functional skills to determine whether a client qualifies for TR /rt services and

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to identify in which areas the client is most likely to improve from receiving TR

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/rt services it is divided into three domains physical ambulation general

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coordination vision hearing etc that was

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one - cognitive eg attention orientation concentration long term memory receptive

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language etc and three emotional and social eg functioning in dyads small

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groups competition conflicts or arguments etc the assessment data are

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collected using observation and chart / review the functional fitness assessment

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for adults over 60 years old Ausmus at all 1996 is designed to determine

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functional abilities compared to age and sex norms of seniors with limited disabilities

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were performing ADL's it tests six physical function areas body composition

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flexibility agility / dynamic balance coordination strength and endurance

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terrible way to do a flashcard right the content relevant but this needs to be

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broken up into many many many smaller pieces so for example the there should be a flashcard for you know the factor R

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you know list the three domains of the factor R or list the what original

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population it was meant for the VA oh and it's applicable populations in

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general so that includes acute hospitalization rehabilitation psychiatric sector II so break each of

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these into little pieces you learn all of the content but you get much more specific smaller school size

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flashcards boy whoever put these together shame shame shame I gonna try

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to find some better ones but they're there what's out there heavily but you get the idea so we'll do we do that

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Sundays from 4 to 4 to 4 34 to 4:45 we try not to do too much of it because human brain can only handle so much

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chunking and focus on certain things and you have to change gears and so it's

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more effective to do that distributed learning rather than the mass learning as research proves but will probably

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throw at least one of these in from time to time unless we've got too much content to cover for that particular

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episode I've been involved with talk shows and radio for 15 years nearly 15

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years as well and you know both both terrestrial radio as well as internet

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radio many many many different shows Middle Earth talk show doctors Enid synthetic Zen show the tech talk show

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RPG research various entertainment shows like heroes of the Mist

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been on a guest on many other shows Gen Con TV and KREM to news and and others so you know

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just bringing all of that and hopefully you'll find this enjoyable it's not gonna be generally comedic it's

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not going to be you know flashy and high-energy and often you'll be able to

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just listen to this in your car on a podcast when we get this added to podcast streams and such you know I will

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have to get a few episodes out first before we start applying to that but we will do it time permitting and so

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hopefully folks find us useful so that I did this because I did not see and if there is one out there I'd appreciate

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you letting me know a talk show about therapeutic recreation you know a big

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part we want to be talking about is advocacy because I think one of the

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areas that we've really suffered in rec therapy is advocacy and part of that

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shown by how few states you know really have any kind of consistency of the

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practice how few people even have heard of rec therapy and therapy recreation I am huh Minh in to people all the time of

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no I didn't never even heard of the term recreation therapy and even less therapeutic recreation and I have to do

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the pitch and explain it they still don't really get it and they have to give specific examples so it is we need

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to get that word out a lot more and part of that is what what's happening with occupational therapy kind of eating TRS

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lunch ot seems to be much better organized and better funded than the TR

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world and maybe part of that's just the nature of the TR profession a study I want to do in conjunction with professor

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Messina is to check on the I have had

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many many many TR professors who claim to either have been diagnosed or believe that they are ADHD on some part of the

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spectrum of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder either with or without hyperactivity with or without attention et cetera and

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and I am I was diagnosed back in the 70s and had that Delinda later as an adult as well so I

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definitely can confirm an ADHD diagnosis from appropriate resources especially the neuro education folks are really

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good at diagnosis that's neuro education comm they're actually based here in Spokane they do a very good job with

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figuring out learning disabilities cognitive functional assessments diagnosis etc one of the better

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organizations I've seen and they're really really good at it it's not cheap it's a few thousand dollars to go through a full diagnosis but really

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great stuff there and certainly in my case one of the reasons I went into

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therapeutic recreation so previously I had a very successful career in computer science and information technology information security I quickly climbed

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up and became chief information officer and chief technology officer for a number of companies I worked either for

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or with a whole slew of fortune 500 and fortune 100 companies including but not

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limited to a major oil and energy companies Amazon Barnes & Noble Adobe

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Microsoft the list goes on and on and I was fortunately able to semi retire at

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an early age when I was 33 and focused on raising my then very young three boys

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as a single parent they are now all grown adults and they are now moved to

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different parts of the country and coming into their own I'm very happy to make two of them are now married its youngest ones and but back then back in

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o3y I came home to folks and raising the kids but I wanted to look ahead to what I was going to do with the next stage of my life once they were drone was I gonna

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go back into computer tech or something else and one of my computer businesses was

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the computer training schools and I kept getting kids with struggles the ADHD

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learning disabilities etc the parents would come and say help help my kid is failing typing or failing computer class

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or whatever can you help but I'm like oh I'm not a child psychologist but I'll see what I can do related to the subject matter you

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want me to teach and I would use games just intuitively use games you know somebody who's struggled ADHD a you know

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I now understand the terminology now I didn't then but it's an intrinsic motivation thing and so by using games for example for

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the typing to get them to play a video game that was improving their typing

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kept them engaged plus I used I didn't know it then but betoken economies they

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would get rewards and get that little dopamine hit there and reinforcement if they stayed focused on an activity or

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got a good report card you know each week from their teacher a report note

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they would get another piece to build a computer if that was something when I had a lot of spare parts lying around

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that they could slowly assemble a computer they wouldnt get to own the computer but they get to build their own and then get it operational and you know

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actually learn how to build their own computer in my lab and such and then I had a lot of other training programs I

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had students all the way from ages about 6 or 8 all the way up to literally 96

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years old or 86 years old 96 was a different program here 86 years old

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coming in they were just bright I broke them in this simple small educational module so I was a went through teacher

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certification back when I taught at Brahman schools and the American automotive Institute so I have a extensive teaching background as well

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excuse me and again this is the first episode so I'm just kind of introduce you again I don't want it to be talking

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about me and our organizations but for a first episode so you have a baseline let you know who the heck I am and again

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hopefully we'll be talking a lot more about others and as a focus in the future episodes

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so we broke it into 45-minute sessions they pay the classes were between 10 to

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20 dollars a class you could take classes many times as you wanted they were small classes I didn't it didn't

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take in more than 12 students at a time you would first watch the it's been about 5 to 10 to 15 minutes for showing

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and discussing the topic so let's say it's learning how to use email I keep mine as the back around 2002 or so or it

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was you know browsing on the web or buying online there's just some very

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simple straightforward tasks that these people wanted to learn how to do or get

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better at so then after the representation on the big screen and kind of just watching

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I then have them do an activity following lawn on the big screen and then we would then give them an

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assignment you know the following lawn would take about five to ten to 15 minutes and then I would give them an assignment to do it on their own while I

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walked around and helped him if they got stuck so they they you know we talked about it and we walked through it then

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they figured out on their own and that was a very useful little

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program it was one of many different approaches used with the computer schools and so after there was one kid

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who just completely turned around she came in and he was sitting there typing away and doing his thing for over 20

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minutes she's like I don't know how you do it we've tried medication we've tried all these other things and he just

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couldn't sit still or focus for more than five minutes and you've got him I'm like wow I just used games

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to be a total says like well he likes doing this let's let's see if we can coorporate the learning aspects into

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that activity and lo and behold what do you know it works this is again before I went through any of the TR training so

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when I was looking at moving to somewhere else where I could afford to to because I've

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had stayed in California there's no way I could have afforded to to go into early retirement I looked at multiple I

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was looking at child psychology and my psychology friend said you might want to look at some of the specialty

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professions and the alternative professions and I looked at OTB T and MT

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and art therapy and RT and all of that ended up set in on music and recreation therapy I'm a musician I've been I can I

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play over 20 instruments of all styles world music classical rock pop funk hip hop jazz you name it and under the

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aliases since that exam and I've got over more than a dozen albums and more than 200 pieces out there floating

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around so love of music have seen the power of music to help people it

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certainly you know helps me it's a therapeutic thing for me personally and I've seen it you know so much and then

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we do in our programs a lot of cooperative music drum circles and

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cooperative compositions and cooperative improv jams and such so I've seen the power of that to build

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community and help people build confidence and just all sorts of wonderful benefits from cooperative type

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music so eventually settled on Eastern washing University because it seemed to

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have a really great program you come out of there with a lot of hands-on experience and the very first quarter

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first textbook on it was talking about a lack of these cooperative activities and

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so you know that's where I got in and I didn't even go in thinking about role playing games but it became very clear

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that that was a powerful modality especially once the the research started to improve which we helped make happen

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anyway moving forward through this whole

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process worked with heavily with the deaf community we still run weekly sign language study groups and do activities

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that the deaf community have worked in brain injury Department spinal cord injury departments a whole slew of

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at-risk populations muscular dystrophy cerebral palsy elderly populations

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you know geriatric and others as young as two and a half year old nonverbal

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autism spectrum with the neurotypical peers in various programs through

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University and elsewhere you know tons of Community Programs hippotherapy I

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went through a lot of play therapy the actual rigid play there there's been a recent uptick of something called play

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therapy or therapeutic play that is not the same thing as what is licensed

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there's a licensed play therapy out there and it's very hands-off you have a playroom and set up a very specific way

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and you're supposed to just redirect everything back to the child and let the child do all of the talking and you try

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to do as little and be as hands-off as possible and you have very set scripts on how to do that and I went through a

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lot of that training one thinking it might be a plate is something I want to include in my tool belt but the the

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hands off this and such I well I see the value of it for certain needs didn't really fit the style I was hoping to go

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with it I really liked more with rec therapy but now there's a newer version that's more like rec therapy and I don't

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know what's going on here somebody's just trying to bypass having to go through all the school and certification and other requirements I'm

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not sure it's just been happening the last year or two but their people have been speaking at conferences and airing about play therapy it's getting lots of

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hype and attention I'll have to figure out more about what's going on with that in the future if you know anything about

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it I'd love for your to hear your comments about it and then there's a course occupational therapy which I did look over because it they tend to have a

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higher income they also have higher requirements and of course I know TRS trying to push towards the master's and level requirement rather than

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recreational and I would love to have a discussion with some of the at Hren and see TRC folks about that because well on

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the other hand I understand the because of trying to compete with masters and

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doctorate level in ot and Pt and such rec therapists don't make that much

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money fortunately I do because I have private practice I'm able to make a pretty good billable wage much higher than most who

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are in facilities and to raise the student debt costs that much higher by

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raising the degree even higher so we have we have a shortage of recreation therapists not a glut and we want to

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raise the standards but I I'm concerned that we're raising it to the Masters level where you know we don't have

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licensing in most states right looking at half a dozen or even close to that

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I'm afraid it's going to choke out the TR profession that much more and ot is

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trying to do it we had here in Washington State them amending they've amended play and avocation hobbies and

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such to the state definition of occupational therapy so they have

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intentionally encroached directly on rec therapy here in Washington State and they're doing it across the country if

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you look at the American Occupational Therapy Association website a OTA org

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back in December 2017 and I've heard this many times before and since this is

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an article by Chris Eve ugly apologize if that's mispronounced from December 2017

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and it says the American therapeutic recreation Association natre describes recreational therapy as quote treatment

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service designed to restore remediate and rehabilitate a person's level of functioning independence and life

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activities to promote health and wellness as well as reduce or eliminate the activity limitations to

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participation and life situations caused by an illness or disabling condition at your 2015 end quote sound familiar

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that quote statement of meaning 2015 end quote as the Association calls it is eerily similar to the definition of

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occupational therapy although recreation therapy and occupational therapy both

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traced their roots back to the same beginnings the professions have evolved differently recreational therapists

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focus on play and leisure as a means for therapy and can even be grouped into community recreation instead of health

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care I'd say in addition to rather than instead of by the way as I'm sure many of you would agree

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currently recreation therapists are seeking licensure through the country in order to be legally recognized as a

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profession because their description of recreational therapy is so similar to the model definition for occupational

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therapy AOTA and state occupational therapy associations must be vigilant and monitoring any recreation therapy

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leisure legislation that is sorry licensure legislation that is introduced we do this to ensure that the recreation

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therapy scope of practice does not encroach on the occupational therapy scope of practice and that recreation

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therapy language defines a distinct scope of practice legislators need to be educated about the important differences

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between occupational therapy and recreation therapy including educational and experience requirements currently as

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of this article 2017 the District Columbia New Hampshire North Carolina Oklahoma and Utah have licensure for

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recreational therapy Washington State has registration which is a level less than licensure in California's title

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protection which restricts the use of the term recreation therapist to only those who have met certain education

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requirements 2016 two states Kentucky and Pennsylvania introduced legislation that licensed recreation therapists each

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time legislation is introduced AOTA works with the State Association our strategy for dealing with the legislation and those

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the the aggressive language here this can include submitting testimony to the state legislature lobbying the

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legislators kravid crafting amendments with alternative language and organizing

33:17

a grassroots effort a o2a does all that we can to provide support to the state

33:22

associations in order to protect the occupational therapy scope of practice not all legislation however has been

33:28

created equal the enacted statute in Oklahoma for example clearly defines recreational therapists as using

33:34

recreational and leisure activities as treatment therapeutic recreational recreation therapy means the specialized

33:40

application of recreation to assist with treating and/or maintaining the health status functional abilities recreation

33:47

and leisure activities and ultimately the quality of life for individuals hospitalized and/or receiving treatment

33:53

for various conditions and individuals with disabilities a OTA and state associations would be less likely to

34:00

oppose a licensure bill like Oklahoma's which has a specific definition that does not encroach on occupational

34:05

therapy scope of practice so while I'm sympathetic to their concerns there's a

34:13

little hypocrisy at least in the Washington State one so for example here is what they modified the Washington

34:19

State Legislature for occupational therapy to now include the scope that

34:24

overlaps intentionally with recreation therapy so this is under our cw18 dot

34:31

59.0 to zero and there's many other portions to the

34:36

1859 section but this is this is the part that's most notable occupational

34:42

therapy in quotes is the scientifically based use of purposeful activity with individuals who are limited by physical

34:48

injury or illness psychosocial dysfunction developmental or learning disabilities or the aging process in

34:54

order to maximize independence prevent disability and maintain health the

34:59

practice encompasses evaluation treatment and consultation specific occupational therapy services include

35:06

but are not limited to : using specifically designed activities and

35:12

exercises to enhance neurodevelopmental cognitive perceptual motor sensory

35:17

integrative and psychomotor functioning semicolon administering and interpreting

35:23

tests such as manual muscle and sensory negation semicolon teaching daily living

35:29

skills semicolon developing pre-vocational skills and play and

35:34

avocation abilities semicolon designing fabricating or applying selected

35:41

orthotic and prosthetic devices or selected adaptive equipment semicolon

35:46

wound care management is provided in our CW 1859 dot one seventy semicolon and

35:52

adapting environments for persons with disabilities these services are provided

35:58

individually in groups or through social systems than they have occupational therapy aid occupational therapy

36:03

assistant occupational therapy practitioner etc now if rec therapy is

36:11

going to push for this master's level requirement for the CTRs then it's really important to bring back the

36:17

emphasis of the lower tiers of TR so the recreation therapy assistant or

36:24

something like that so that there is still a means to get to making a some kind of income as they

36:32

worked their way up through the educational system and potentially accumulating a massive amounts of school

36:39

debt or having to work their way and pay their way through it bit by bit this is something that people really need to keep in mind or we're reaching a

36:46

breaking point here if we haven't already crossed it with the level of school debt and so just you know with

36:56

rec therapy I mean I'm seeing more and more people who come in who wanted rec therapy I've talked to so many who have

37:01

gone off to ot and other professions simply because of the money they have said oh I really wish I could continue

37:08

in TR I can't afford to work in TR when I came into this field I'd hoped to I now realize I have to go on to something

37:15

that I can actually cover my student debt I can't tell you how many I've seen

37:21

a lot of people drop out of the TR program midway through when they realize what their income

37:26

spec's arse erect therapists are not that good they do the math and so they go off to something like OT or PT or

37:33

some other field where yes they get a rack up huge debt but they're also hopeful that they'll make a better

37:38

income so that's something that needs to be taken carefully into consideration I

37:45

am a huge advocate for rec therapy and therapeutic recreation proselytize about

37:53

it every chance I get every talk show I'm on every live internet broadcast when I'm on television etc on stage I do

38:02

thoroughly believe that this particular approach to improving people's lives is

38:09

an exceptional approach for many I have seen time and time again with my own

38:15

patients where PT and ot know things were boring and painful and they weren't

38:21

intrinsically motivated and we were able to define their in their intrinsic motivation and get them to stick to it

38:27

and then I run into them years later and they're still doing the stuff we taught them they've stopped doing the PT stuff

38:33

they've stopped doing the OT stuff but they're still doing the RT things we taught them because we found the right

38:39

mat mesh for them with our RPG programs

38:44

in the community our goal is not to have the kids keep coming in and the adults keep coming in our goal is to teach them enough that then they can go run their

38:51

own programs and they do the people have worked with who are complete recluses because of social anxiety panic attacks

38:58

etc that have been able to completely turn around through a graduated exposure therapy using role-playing games and

39:04

such their lives have gone from a little bubble to a huge scope they've gotten their world back and now they're running

39:11

games and activities out in the community and they have friends that don't have to only come to their house

39:16

etc they've gotten their lives back and this intrinsic motivation aspect is just

39:23

such a big factor and there's many other factors as well but this is I think one

39:29

of the more powerful aspects because it's that recidivism right whether it's

39:35

we work with incarcerated populations and recidivism rate was very high for most repeat offenders

39:41

by definition however research has shown

39:46

that creative programs that involve drama music wreck things like that can

39:52

reduce recidivism anywhere from 20 to 80 percent so much so now that the federal

39:57

government's out there offering or upwards of 20 million dollars to have

40:02

creative programs brought into these institutions and a lot of you know and

40:08

you've got the spectrum of the incarcerated population on the left side or the the industry on the far left side

40:16

here we have rehabilitation people really care about getting the inmates the skills social abilities an empathy

40:23

development etc to because they're going to be back in the world and even if they're lifers and won't ever get parole

40:30

making them more functional while incarcerated for the next umpteen decades will make it safer for the

40:39

prison workers and other inmates and can lower cost there so for those that are purely punitive the organization's they

40:45

don't really care about the rehab and the well-being of the inmates they care about their bottom line and safety and

40:50

security of their prison workers well there's research supporting that that makes it a safer environment and so rec

40:57

therapy you know a professor Emily Messina her her whole dissertation was on TR programs in prison settings when

41:05

she was in Florida and such and as a female rec therapist by the way interesting statistic if you take a look

41:11

at the at row number 's TR is about 90 percent female 89 90

41:18

percent female and when i first came into it know for at least in my classrooms it was 50/50 i don't i am

41:24

able to find a report from that time period of what it was actually i don't know if it's been this way the whole time but at least my peer group that

41:31

went through the TR program aw when i was in my early 30s it was about half

41:37

male half female and and it was that way for many years and it's only in the last five six seven years that i see most of

41:44

the classrooms are almost entirely female or you know highly predominantly

41:51

and not sure what what's going on there if that's just a social cultural wave or what but anyway to be female in a men's

42:00

prison with some hardened criminals who some are never going to be discharged and feel they have nothing to lose

42:05

can be a scary environment and a professor Messina you know writes at length about the

42:12

challenges of trying to do these programs in such a setting and and and being female and and the the inner

42:19

dynamics and such that happened there and the success of this type of approach

42:24

using recreation and recreation therapy and such to help turn lives around and

42:30

and we've seen it with our programs with with at-risk populations and incarcerated populations we've seen it

42:36

with substance dependency transition programs just such they because you find

42:44

that intrinsic motivation they will keep doing it right that's the whole that's the whole point and through the

42:50

recreation Theramore those things as part of our training it really does make

42:57

a difference and I am very concerned to see that occupation it seems like

43:03

occupational therapy is eating recreation therapy's lunch that's what it looks like we and again my question

43:09

about ADHD in sets a very few people in TR that want to do research i've been

43:15

courted by multiple people begging me to go on to a doctorate level in TR because

43:21

there's a lot of a whole bunch of TR doctorates that are retiring and those programs will shut down but you know

43:29

while i do really well professionally in many different careers i've done very well professionally i really do struggle

43:35

with school my grades are decent but i generally have to spend three to six

43:41

times as many hours because of the ADHD in different LDS and such it's it's where I love teaching and I love

43:49

learning I'm a lifelong learner the typical University environment in the way it's structured and the

43:55

limitations I've had to work in as a professor before as a teacher before and all the politics and everything else

44:02

isn't very appealing to want to go on to and now fortunately I don't have student debt I've been able to pay my way

44:08

through school as I've gone and which has been wonderful but yeah I don't I

44:15

don't know why people keep pressuring me to do that and I don't know we'll see

44:22

but we but this is all part also where I think there are so few rec therapists

44:27

who are going on to advanced degrees and doing research and such but I think it

44:33

could be a high level of ADHD in the field I mean think about think about it so it used to be and I've done a lot of

44:39

research on ADHD and programs and such it used to be thought that ADHD you grew

44:45

out of it right and what people thought that most people stopped having ADHD when they became adults and that turned

44:51

out not to be true for the most part there is a developmental delay but you

44:57

know they eventually mostly catch up but they still struggle with things but what we found is most adults have developed

45:02

coping mechanisms and have made a life choices career choices environmental

45:07

choices that are cater more to their strengths and rather than their weaknesses so for example if somebody's

45:14

hyperactive and needs to be physical all the time they're less likely to pick a desk top job and more likely to pick a

45:20

physical job maybe it's working in carpentry maybe it's rec therapy an

45:25

awful lot of rec therapist come from you know either the jock or outdoors program background you don't see very many

45:33

people like coming from computer science and such into the TR programs and and I

45:41

and wonder so this is something that I want to do with Emily spin-up at some point a formal study in the field where

45:49

we go to through a true and such and get as many response as possible to see if there is a higher than average

45:56

prevalence of ADHD in the TR profession it kind of makes sense I could be wrong

46:02

and that's the beauty of research right and I'm totally open to it being wrong I would really like to know from from from

46:08

all the anecdotal experiences and all the professor's I've talked to and then just for me well it kind of makes sense

46:15

that the ADHD spectrum might pick this as a profession and then that would be

46:20

further reinforced by not wanting to go to more school because of the struggles with ADHD in a typical classroom

46:26

environment and wouldn't want to do the research because that's a lot of sitting down and focusing and you can get to hyper focus mode but it's can be very

46:31

challenging to finish things boy do I know so it certainly seems plausible but

46:39

nobody's done the research and it'd be very fascinating to find out mmm excuse me and then compare that to other

46:45

professions and in the national average so this is another research project I've cut several going on right now through

46:50

UW and WSU and some of our own but I would love to do it someday and it's directly relevant to TR and maybe psych

46:57

you know I don't know who to talk to the TR field atra and CTR see who they would recommend for a grant funding to do

47:04

something like that I don't take taxpayer grant funding though I'm a

47:11

stickler about that focus on private institutional you know either the through membership payments grant

47:17

funding or a private institution or something like that or individual donations and such a when I really steer

47:27

away from the taxpayer funded grants and such because it just it ends up becoming

47:32

programs get killed because somebody out there politically disagrees with this

47:38

program you know whatever the program is X program and they're angry that tax dollars are being used and they didn't

47:44

have a say well well those tax dollars went and so they lobby and they succeed and then they get shut down there's been

47:49

program after program like that here in Washington State and other states that have been shut down because one individual or one organization didn't

47:56

like where their tax laws were going whereas if it's not tax dollar funded

48:01

you know they can grumble all they want there's you know I mean they can maybe try the whole business boycott thing or

48:06

something but generally you know it's a different issue so I just generally like

48:11

to steer away from that I'm not really sure for TR for doing the ADHD prevalence in the TR profession where to

48:17

turn to so if you have any suggestions for that I'd appreciate it alright so I've kind of rambled on long enough here you know you've got to know

48:25

a lot about me hopefully in future episodes we'll be able to talk and focus on others how others got in at ER why

48:31

they do this and what they're doing to help advocate for the TR profession what they're doing

48:37

related to research in TR if any what they're doing as far as applied programs if you fit any of these in any way

48:44

please reach out contact our PG therapeutics at gmail.com and of course

48:51

go to TR talk show com and we'd love to have you on the show send an email

48:56

explaining your background the show is Tuesdays 1 to 2 p.m. Pacific time so that might be a schedule

49:03

challenge for some people excuse me we could potentially do some pre-recorded

49:08

interviews that I could then insert into the show and/or streaming live so there are multiple ways to address this but

49:13

generally most people can handle a half hour to an hour shift their lunch a little bit or it's after if they're on

49:19

the East Coast that's near the end of their workday excetera we usually haven't had too much trouble with with guests being able to make it work on

49:25

other shows but let me know and we'll get you on here if you're interested being a co-host if you're here in Spokane area so much the better we get

49:31

you here in studio that's ideal but it's we can have remote co-host co-host too we use an open-source web conferencing

49:38

called jitsi JIT si it works both on phone and desktops and works quite well

49:44

we use it all the time half a dozen times a week to remote people from around the world for our training and

49:50

other programs so it works quite well and it's not perfect none of them are but it works quite well and it's free

49:56

and cross-platform so we can make it work if you want to be a remote co-host or either a semi-regular or regular

50:02

co-host so let me know again RPG therapeutics at gmail.com we'll be back again next week Tuesday 1 p.m. I'll have

50:10

a little bit more of a structure worked out hopefully we'll have a guest or somebody and we will cover more of the

50:15

news I was giving a little bit of a snippet there of some of the topics we will be covering we'll be covering the

50:20

latest news from atra of course remember the conference coming up in Reno if you haven't gotten the ticket agent hurry

50:26

and do so and they do I don't know if they used them up but they had scholarships and such for students so definitely check that out and we were

50:32

planning to be there and hope to see you there so feel free to post your comments to the video help spread the word

50:38

advocate for the benefits of recreation therapy and therapeutic recreation TR

50:44

professionalism and let's get the word out and let's help turn the tide about awareness of

50:50

rec therapy therapeutic recreation and how therapeutic recreation specialists

50:56

around the world are improving the lives of millions let's let's get the word out about that for now wherever you may be

51:03

be well and tune in again next week TR talk-show com





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