Biomedical subjects

D Pierce

Publications and source records attributed to D Pierce.

40 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

PubMedDate not supplied

Maternal management of the home as a developmental play space for infants and toddlers.

OBJECTIVE: One purpose of this qualitative study was to describe the work done by mothers as they manage the spaces and objects of the home to support the development of infants and toddlers at play. METHOD: Eighteen mother-infant dyads participated in the study. Data were collected via monthly in-home videotaping of infants and monthly interviews with mothers, from 1 to 18 months of infant age. Data were analyzed with a grounded theory approach and computer-assisted video and text analysis. RESULTS: The results describe the everyday tasks of mothers of infants and toddlers, such as selecting commercial toys and household objects for play, positioning infants for play, maintaining and making play objects available, furnishing the home with child care equipment, controlling infant access to the spaces of the home, and monitoring for safety. CONCLUSION: This description contributes to our understanding of maternal work, infant and toddler development in context, co-occupations, and the neglected spatial dimension of occupation.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Untangling occupation and activity.

Activity and occupation are two core concepts of occupational therapy that are in need of differentiation. Occupation is defined here as a person's personally constructed, one-time experience within a unique context. Activity is defined as a more general, culturally shared idea about a category of action. The ways in which subjectivity and context are handled within the concepts of occupation and activity are keys to disentangling them. The proposed untangling of the two concepts into distinct definitions is congruent with their historical origins as well as with current definitional trends. Once occupation and activity are recognized as two separate and equally valuable concepts, they offer a rich set of theoretical relations for exploration. The clarity that will result from differentiating occupation and activity will enhance disciplinary discourse and research as well as enhance the intervention efficacy, moral surety, and political strength of the profession.

Activities of Daily Living↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Occupation by design: dimensions, therapeutic power, and creative process.

Two forces are converging, creating conditions both challenging and potentially fruitful for occupational therapy. The profession's knowledge base describing occupation is growing exponentially. At the same time, functional outcomes of intervention are being increasingly valued within the health care environment. Other professions imitate and claim our areas of expertise in the most flattering and dangerous ways. To benefit from the convergence of these forces, occupational therapy must expeditiously translate understanding of occupation into powerful occupation-based practice. Three bridges must be built: a generative discourse, demonstration sites, and effective education. The occupational design approach offers important conceptual tools with which to rapidly build these bridges to powerful practice. Described here are subjective and contextual dimensions of occupational experience, elements of the occupational design process, and how these factors produce therapeutic power through the appeal, intactness, and accuracy of interventions.

Curriculum↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Implications of recent findings in posttraumatic stress disorder and the role of pharmacotherapy.

Recent evidence suggests that an etiologic model of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) must include both vulnerability factors (presumably related to dysregulation of stress responses and/or failure of normal restitutive mechanisms following trauma) and factors related to trauma severity. The fact that rates of PTSD increase with the severity of trauma suggests that normal adaptive mechanisms may become overwhelmed even in the absence of vulnerability factors. Consistent with this view, efforts to demarcate normative from disordered reactions to severe trauma, such as the new diagnosis of acute stress disorder, have had limited success. Debate over the moral and scientific implications of receiving a trauma-related diagnosis has further complicated the issue and perpetuated a false dichotomy concerning normative responses. The literature on clinical trials in PTSD is reviewed. The range of treatment responses, and the categorical breadth of compounds studied, requires interpretation before the literature as a whole can be understood. One of the many limitations of this new literature is the absence of treatment-outcomes research on individuals with the common comorbidity of substance abuse. The most recent findings with selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors and related compounds indicate a more optimistic outlook for pharmacological treatment of PTSD than was suggested by earlier trials. Given these observations, investigators will hopefully be encouraged to pursue study and development of treatment models that include both pharmacological and psychosocial interventions.

Acute Disease↗