5 Reasons You Need to Change Your Plan of Care – Time Management

Therapeutic Breaks in the Therapy Session

To recap: the first three reasons of the 5 Reasons You Need to Change Your Plan of Care included accomplished goals and discharge, inappropriate goals and reevaluation, and proper documentation of the session.

The fourth reason a therapist may not meet all the goals during a treatment session may be that time is not allocated to allow for the best therapeutic outcomes. Another way to say this is, there may be a time management issue during the therapy session. As therapists we must evaluate how we are spending our time in each therapy session to make sure that we are making the most of our therapeutic time to get the most out of each session. Sometimes we may find that too much time is being spent on a therapeutic break vs. time on something therapeutic. Therapeutic breaks are necessary for children— it creates a fun and engaging session for them. But it’s important to keep track of the timing of your session and ensure that the focus is on the therapeutic activity itself.

A problem you may encounter with therapeutic breaks, which can eat up valuable therapeutic time, is bringing the child back from the break game. A way to mitigate this is to keep the breaks short and weave the therapeutic activity into the break game. For example, games that don’t support what you want to accomplish in therapy may cause there to be too much time to be spent on the game and not enough on therapy. Make the two activities work together! This may not always be what you have planned for the session, so sometimes you’ll need to be flexible and adjust. Be aware of the time and make the best possible use of it— this is how your kiddos will improve! Create a new situation for the child, for yourself, and for the therapy session. You will find you will be very successful with this approach!

For more information, check out Pediatric Developmental Therapy’s Working Therapist Podcast titled, “5 Reasons You Need to Change Your Plan of Care.”