Occupational Therapy Students Provide Telehealth Services

Video conferencing enables students, faculty and an alumna to continue therapies despite stay-at-home mandate

Sacred Heart University’s occupational therapy (OT) students are engaged in numerous service learning projects this semester in partnership with community organizations. In response to the coronavirus, the OT students had to stop face-to-face engagements and now are delivering OT-related activities and interventions virtually and through videos, a practice called telehealth.

Telehealth provides patients and health professionals the ability to continue interaction, such as occupational therapy, despite an inability to meet in person. In the current pandemic, it is giving students the opportunity to extend their interprofessional learning virtually.

SHU occupational therapy and speech language pathology (SLP) programs are making use of computer-enabled contact as well, including the Monday night social group that has been gathering in the Center for Healthcare Education for several years. The program helps young adults with developmental disabilities improve and practice social, communication and daily living skills. At each get-together, participants engage with peers and complete a sensory motor and social skills activity. Ellen Martino, a member of the occupational therapy faculty and Taryn Rogers, clinical assistant professor and director of clinical education for communication disorders, organize and supervise the social group meetings. On April 6, Martino and Rogers, along with OT and SLP students, worked with the group through an online video conference.

“Continuation of the group through telehealth provides continuity for the young adults and enables students to participate in supervised clinical activities required by both curricula and accreditation,” said Jody Bortone, associate dean of the College of Health Professions and founding chair of occupational therapy.

Julia Chiappetta, an OT alumni from SHU, is a school-based therapist who has been providing sessions virtually since schools closed. Chiappetta conducts video conferences with students and sends them and their caregivers pictures with noted directions for therapeutic activities. She then talks with the students and caregivers during their therapy session while they complete the activities using household items. A “let’s make a pizza” exercise, for example, requires the student to use bilateral and fine motor coordination and planning skills, as well as executive functioning to follow  directions.

For students who don’t have access to a computer, Chiappetta creates and mails them hard-copy activity packets and has been following up with phone calls. Like Martino, Rogers and SHU’s other OT students and faculty, Chiappetta has incorporated the use of Google Classroom for her telehealth communications.