Demonstrate advanced clinical knowledge and leadership skills on client safety through disseminating information to practicing clinicians and professionals within the emergency management community.

DME Resource

When considering resources that would be helpful to my professional community, I decided to first tackle my OT department at work. I developed a resource highlighting the differences in Durable Medical Equipment (DME), particularly those related to activities of daily living (ADL). First, I listed commonly ordered DME used after a hospital stay to ensure safety post-discharge and included images for easy comparison. Second, I checked prices for these items from both our hospital's third-party supplier (Medstar) and a popular online platform (Amazon) used by patients and caregivers. After that, I made a shortlist of factors to help acute care rehab specialists choose the right DME for individual patients, focusing on personalized care. Aligned with my learning in my professional portfolio classes, I matched my language to the audience, since this resource is designed for therapists. 

This resource was shared during a departmental in-service, given to all acute care rehab staff for future reference in patient discussions, and stored on our shared drive for new team members. Using this resource, I assisted my managers in creating and testing a new DME "smartphrase" for our documentation system, which enables OTs to efficiently input information into our notes using dropdown menus. To evaluate the efficacy of my DME resource, I decided to conduct a brief anonymous poll 1 month after my in-service.