Let's Reflect - Innovation Showcase

    As a future occupational therapy practitioner, it is becoming second nature for me to think of ways to adapt and modify someone's environment or way of completing tasks in order to improve or maintain their independence and enhance their ability to participate in meaningful occupations. However when I was presented with Maurice's case and a rubber band to create an intervention or low tech adaptive device that could be of use to Maurice, I was left stumped for many weeks. Before I go into my experience on coming up with and bringing to life my adaptive device, I will provide a short background on Maurice. 

    Maurice is an 83-year-old retired dairy farmer who was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease about 10 years ago, as well as bilateral cataracts. He and his wife have no children and live in their two story home in a rural small town. He experiences difficulties with speech, fatigue, writing, self feeding, and requires moderate to full assistance with all of his ADLs. Maurice expresses that he likes to have some degree of independence, and would like to be able to have choices in his daily routine, like choosing what he will wear. He has recently been admitted to skilled nursing facility due to his wife's inability to care for him at home because of a back injury. Maurice expresses that one of his main concerns is returning to his home in the near future. 

    With this information, I began brainstorming interventions and adaptive devices that would assist Maurice in completing his ADLs and maintaining some decision making power. I originally was thinking of creating some type of weighted utensils and/or writing tool, but as I brought this idea to life I realized that I could come up with something that would be more meaningful to Maurice. So, I continued to brainstorm...

    Something that stuck with me from Maurice's wishes was the desire to be able to have choices in his daily routine, which led me to adaptive shoe laces. This would give Maurice the ability to maintain his independence in deciding which of his shoes he wants to wear, as well as prevent him from having to retire his normal shoes for slip on shoes without laces. You can see in the picture below, I used rubber bands that match the color of the shoes and car trim clips in order to create shoes that Maurice can slip on without having to tie or untie any laces. This can be done on any of his shoes so that he can continue to choose which style of shoe he would like to wear; and if he loses the ability to put the shoes on for himself, there is other adaptive equipment that can assist him in putting the shoes on.