This is a part of the podcast series from the Model Systems Knowledge Translation Center on Returning to School After Burn Injury. Ben Madrid discusses how occupational therapy can help a child return to school after a burn injury. 

I think on the burn unit here, what we try and do is we look to see how the patient interacts with their environment. A child's job is to play and to basically interact with toys, whatever they're, they're doing. So as an occupational therapist, what I want to do is to see … can we get the patient back to playing, to being a child?

So for a child on the burn unit with a severe burn, a lot of the issues that we see are the multiple lines and cords that are attached to the child, whether it's monitors, IVs. Sometimes because of where the burn is, they have splints that prevent them from moving just so that the IVs don't get pulled. So how does a child interact with her environment with all those different things attached to them? That's what occupational therapy does. We look at them and try and find a way for them to, to play, to move about, because our job is to make sure that their hands and arms will continue to function once the burn is healed.

So a lot of times what we'll do is we'll ask parents … what does the child like to do? Or if the child's old enough, we'll, we'll ask the child, what do you like to play? What's your favorite toy? What's your favorite game? So we get down to their level so that we know how to, how to best get them to play with a favorite toy or a favorite game, whether it's an iPad or ball or you know, whatever, whatever the child wants or has been doing before, we wanna try and get them back to doing that again.

We need to look at the things that he will eventually have to interact with, that being backpacks, iPads, any kind of computers. Also at the very minimal portion, it's how is he going to, say, open up the backpack if he doesn't have fingers, you know.  How is he gonna manage his clothing? We talk about things like fasteners, like zippers and buttons. How do you go about doing those things if you don't have fingers to, to manipulate the object? So in the spectrum, going from the hospital to home to the school, occupational therapists will look at where he's at and how can we get him back to doing what he was doing before in a more natural way.

We can provide all kinds of equipment to make things easier for the patient or the, or the child. But is it really frustrating for the child? Is it really frustrating for them to try and put a splint on that holds a pen or a stylus or something like that? Can they actually do it? You know, we have to decide, you know, is having him hold a pencil more important than having him just use whatever part of his hand is left and make that experience easier for him. So we will play both sides of the fence. Would you rather use this piece of equipment or would you rather not use the equipment, and, and we can try it this, this way. If they're accepting of the equipment, that's great. If they don't want to use the equipment, we'll look for a different way for them to do, to do the task. 

Visit https://msktc.org/burn and get the answers you need from experts who conduct innovative and high-quality research, provide patient care, and work to improve the health and overall quality of life for people with burn injury. That’s https://msktc.org/burn.