Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Scholarly Project

Degree Name

Doctor of Occupational Therapy (OTD)

Department

Occupational Therapy

First Advisor

Nicole Harris

Abstract

Background: Children with medical complexity (CMC) spend a lot of time in various medical facilities due to their conditions. One of the medical facilities available to families in the Midwest is a respite and hospice home for medically complex children. There are only three other homes like this in the United States. Due to symptoms of their conditions, functional limitations in skill development, and decreased opportunities to engage in the occupation of play, these children can experience occupational deprivation and decreased quality of life. At this specific respite and hospice home, there are many volunteers who sacrifice their time to come and play with the children, but many said during the experience that they did not know how to adapt play to make it more accessible and engaging for these kids.

Purpose: Let’s P.L.A.Y.: Promote Laughter, Adventure, and Young Learning was created to decrease occupational deprivation in the CMC population, increase confidence in those working with kids with varying abilities, increase the role of occupational therapy with the CMC population, and directly address the occupation of play in this setting. The play system was designed to be user-friendly for the intended stakeholders, the volunteers. The end goal of this project is to increase the quality of life for the CMC population through expanding the occupation of play. The project helps address these areas by providing readily available play activities with important information from the lens of occupational therapy, such as steps, environmental set-up, adaptive equipment, activity modification, and basic facilitation techniques.

Methodology: The Person, Environment, Occupation (PEO) model was used to guide the research and development of this scholarly project. A thorough literature review was completed to get an understanding of the CMC population, the conditions they have, their healthcare needs, the role of occupational therapy with this population, and occupational performance for CMC. The transactions between the person, environment, and occupation are inevitable and must support one another to best suit overall occupational performance.

Conclusion: This scholarly project was created to address the need to expand the occupation of play at the respite and hospice home where this project took place, increase volunteer confidence when working with CMC, and provide basic facilitation techniques from the lens of occupational therapy to make play more individualized to the needs, interests, and abilities of each child. The long-term goal of this project is to decrease occupational deprivation and increase the quality of life for the CMC population.

Download

Share

COinS