Patients with Cognitive Impairment Provide Unique Challenges for Physical and Occupational Therapists
Patients with cognitive impairment often have difficulty with functional activities as well as learning or relearning behaviors in the clinic. These patients provide unique challenges for physical and occupational therapists, but there are interventions that can help overcome limitations and maximize patient outcomes. In this webinar, participants will learn many techniques designed to enhance attention and concentration during treatment sessions and maximize the patient's ability to learn new skills and strategies. When patients are unable to make new declarative memories, we need to dramatically alter the approach. We will discuss how to determine the patient's ability and customize the approach to maximize treatment efficacy in cognitively impaired patients. Finally, attendees will be given dozens of ready–to–use cognitive rehabilitation activities designed to enhance targeted cognitive abilities.

Course Content

A. The Effects on Memory and Cognition as Dementia Progresses
  1. Encoding is affected
  2. Storage and retrieval is less affected
  3. Predictable cognitive changes based on retrogenesis
B. Adjusting Therapy for Cognitively Impaired Patients
  1. Don’t overwhelm working memory
  2. What to do when encoding declarative memories isn’t possible
C. Short-Term Interventions and Strategies to Maximize Attention and Improve Memory Ability
  1. Spaced retrieval
  2. Generation effect
  3. Case study
    a. Acute care patient with mild cognitive impairment
    b. Use of walker
    c. Application of generation effect
  4. Retention testing
  5. Overcoming therapist-dependent learning
D. Techniques for Working with Patients Who Have More Severe Impairments
E. Cognitive Rehabilitation Tools and Interventions
  1. Enhancing attention
  2. Visual tasking to maximize new motor learning
  3. Enhancing visual-spatial abilities
  4. Reducing falls through better attention
F. Motivating Patients to be More Fully Engaged
  1. Improving self-efficacy
  2. Developing patient buy-in
  3. Protection motivation theory