{"id":68207,"date":"2021-08-04T16:12:05","date_gmt":"2021-08-04T20:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sargent\/?page_id=68207"},"modified":"2022-12-15T11:27:32","modified_gmt":"2022-12-15T16:27:32","slug":"practical-applications","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sargent\/about-us\/our-publications\/inside-sargent\/inside-sargent-2021\/practical-applications\/","title":{"rendered":"Practical Applications"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
A hydroponic garden at the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital helps Lynn Safenowitz and her team work with patients to strengthen their functional skills.<\/div>\n

Lynn Safenowitz\u2019s professional experiences show how broad and varied the occupational therapy profession can be.<\/p>\n

Consider three recent programs that Safenowitz (\u201984) has overseen as assistant director of rehabilitation services at Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA<\/a> in Los Angeles: teaching children about bullying prevention as part of their social skills development; building a sensory garden to reduce adult psychiatric patients\u2019 anxiety; and showing adolescents how to harvest and cook their own food. Each illustrates the intrinsic rewards of occupational therapy, she says: finding imaginative and meaningful ways to help people live better lives by strengthening their functional skills.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing creative with the functional application of therapies\u2014whether that means social skills training, mindfulness meditation, or nutrition and cooking education\u2014is what makes OT both relevant and unique,\u201d Safenowitz says.<\/p>\n

Meaningful Work<\/h3>\n

Safenowitz discovered OT during a health professions survey course she took as a college junior. She was looking for a way to help people, especially kids, after watching her younger brother struggle in separate classes for children with learning disabilities. She saw an opportunity to engage in hands-on, meaningful work and decided to pursue the subject with a master\u2019s degree at Sargent.<\/p>\n

Safenowitz says the two-year Sargent master\u2019s program, which included internships at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York (working with patients with physical disabilities), Resnick (where she later landed her current job), and the Churchill School in New York, provided the foundation for her professional career.<\/p>\n

After leaving BU, Safenowitz performed OT evaluations for student services in the New York Unified School District. There, she assessed children\u2019s gross and fine motor skills, visual perceptual abilities, and their social skills and play levels, and recommended OT services. Then she relocated to California for a full-time position at Resnick, working for several years before scaling back her schedule\u2014and eventually leaving the hospital\u2014to raise her family. During this stage of her career, she also delivered early intervention services in \u201cMommy and Me\u201d OT therapy groups at her synagogue helping preschool-aged children with their language development and motor and social skills.<\/p>\n

A Proactive Approach<\/h3>\n

Since rejoining Resnick part time in 2012, Safenowitz has overseen several research-driven projects that illustrate the diverse applications of OT.<\/p>\n

Take bullying prevention. With the rise of social media, Safenowitz says the recreational therapists in her department often encounter children and adolescents who’ve experienced\u2014or contributed to\u2014the problem. After some research and professional seminars, therapists conducted role-playing exercises designed to elevate the young people\u2019s empathy. The program\u2019s highlight was an anti-bullying summit hosted at UCLA.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing creative with the functional application of therapies is what makes OT both relevant and unique.\u201d
\n\u2014Lynn Safenowitz<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201c[The kids] practiced role-playing of bullying and being bullied, and what to do and what not to do,\u201d Safenowitz says. \u201cIt\u2019s [about] creating an understanding of how people feel.\u201d<\/p>\n

A similar pattern of research combined with experimentation led to the sensory garden. The garden tested the idea that group participation in tending the plants could help inpatients who are experiencing depression and other conditions learn new skills and improve their moods. In a second gardening project, outpatients of all ages plant seeds, tend plants, and harvest hydroponic produce in a courtyard at one of the hospital\u2019s buildings. They also learn to cook with some of their harvest and package produce to take home or deliver outside the hospital. Safenowitz says the relaxing environment is a perfect location for mindfulness exercises and group discussions.<\/p>\n

The courtyard garden is also a way for younger patients to connect their hospital-based experiences to a practical application of their efforts. This was done first in cooking sessions and then in preparing produce for delivery to Students 4 Students, a group run by UCLA students for peers who lack housing.<\/p>\n

This is the kind of experience that makes OT intrinsically rewarding, a message that Safenowitz communicates to her team of about 21 therapists, plus interns (including some from Sargent), and which informs her work on the Sargent College clinical advisory board that she joined in 2020. And it\u2019s a theme that applies to her career, from her early-career work helping young children with their motor and social skills to the Resnick patient population.<\/p>\n

\u201cProviding therapy and seeing the growth and development is what is rewarding,\u201d she says. \u201cI remember when a toddler who didn\u2019t speak in my early intervention program started to speak. It\u2019s just amazing when you see the success that your patients achieve.”<\/p>\n

Read more stories from Inside Sargent<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A hydroponic garden at the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital helps Lynn Safenowitz and her team work with patients to strengthen their functional skills. Lynn Safenowitz\u2019s professional experiences show how broad and varied the occupational therapy profession can be. Consider three recent programs that Safenowitz (\u201984) has overseen as assistant director of rehabilitation services at Resnick Neuropsychiatric […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10779,"featured_media":68444,"parent":67831,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/no-sidebars.php","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sargent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/68207"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sargent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sargent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sargent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10779"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sargent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68207"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sargent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/68207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74041,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sargent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/68207\/revisions\/74041"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sargent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67831"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sargent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sargent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}