It’s Canada’s 150th Birthday and Participaction is celebrating by encouraging Canadians to get healthy by taking part in the 150 Play List. The 150 Play List is comprised of 150 fun and truly Canadian activities you are encouraged to try this year. Visit the Participaction website to sign-up, track your activities, earn rewards and more.
“Family is not an important thing. It’s everything.” Michael J. Fox
Next Monday, February 20th is Family Day in many provinces across Canada. Family Day is a great reminder to take time to spend quality moments with those who matter most.
Take a look at our Top 10 Suggestions For Fun Family Day Activities:
Stress can negatively affect many aspects of your physical and emotional health including your heart. In recent years, more attention has been paid to reducing stress to help prevent heart disease. The following from Forbes Magazine discusses two new studies that have uncovered more information about the connection between stress and heart disease. Read the article to learn more and check out our post, How Stress is Affecting Your Health, for solutions to reduce stress.
Forbes: The Link Between Stress And Heart Disease May Lie In The Brain
In our previous post, Blue Monday and Beyond – Tips to Beat the Winter Blues we discussed how some research suggests that up to 15% of people in Ontario experience the “winter blues” and 2-3% of the population suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).
If you are suffering from depression, anxiety, SAD or simply the “winter blues” being aware of your feelings, thoughts, emotions and overall mood can help you to understand and cope. The following printable “Mood Diary” will help you to track when you are feeling a certain emotion, the intensity of it, the situational aspects and the effectiveness of your coping mechanisms. Doing so will give you and your healthcare professionals a better understanding of the problem.
For more helpful tools visit our Printable Resources Page.
Julie Entwistle, MBA, BHSc (OT), BSc (Health / Gerontology)
Co-written by Occupational Therapy student Carolyn Rocca
I have several commutes. If I bring my laptop home, one commute is to my dining room table. If I leave my laptop at the office, I have a seven-minute drive (eight in traffic) before I am sitting at my desk. If I am required to be in Toronto for 8:30am, my commute starts at 6:00am for a drive that in “good traffic” would only take me 50 minutes.
With more and more people living away from work so they can afford more sizable housing, more property, or even perhaps a desire or need to stay close to extended family and child care, Flexible Work Schedules are becoming more valued, and dare I say, necessary.
Flexible work schedules are arrangements that allow employees the opportunity to better juggle their family and personal responsibilities that typically conflict with the traditional Monday-to-Friday, 9-to-5 work week. These arrangements can take several forms, including: working a set number of hours with flexible and agreed upon start and end times, working longer days in exchange for a day off, or requesting time off for personal reasons and offering to make it up by working longer hours on another day.
According to Statistics Canada, in 2014 69% of couple families with at least one child were dual-earner families, representing quite an increase from 36% in 1976. As the number of dual-earner families continues to rise, the option of flexible work schedules will become increasingly enticing for such families who struggle to get their kids on the school bus in time for their lengthy commute. In 2012, an estimated 36% of Canadian employees with caregiving responsibilities had flexible hours, and this value will likely continue to rise. As they say, times have changed, and this seems to be a change for the better.
Canada’s 2012 General Social Survey reports that having a flexible schedule that allows employees to choose when their work day starts and ends was associated with slightly greater satisfaction. In fact, 79% of employees with a flexible work schedule reported that they were satisfied or very satisfied with their work–life balance, compared to 73% of those whose schedule was not flexible.
More specifically, studies that have explored the benefits of flexible work schedules for employees suggest that they improve overall work-life balance, reduce workplace stress and health-related symptoms, and increase job satisfaction and organizational commitment, ultimately maintaining their connection to the labor market. These advantages go both ways, as these arrangements benefit employers by enhancing recruitment and retention, reducing absenteeism, and increasing productivity, naturally leading to reduced costs.
So what does this shift towards flexible work options mean for you if you have a disability, and me as an occupational therapist? If you need to return to work following injury or illness, an occupational therapist is well-equipped to help you and your employer devise workplace accommodations to gradually resume your full-time duties, and flexible hours makes this transition more feasible and likely to be successful. For example, if sitting for long periods is challenging, but sitting is a necessary part of your job, then we don’t want your “sitting clock” to be “ticking” while you are stuck in traffic. If flexible work hours can get you at your desk faster, allowing you more time to work and less time to aggravate your symptoms in the car, then a supportive employer should see the benefit of that – for you and them. Also, if as part of your recovery you continue to require medical oversight or treatment by other providers, a flexible work schedule will allow you the freedom to maintain your treatment schedule, while still gradually resuming job duties.
If flexible work hours can benefit both employer and employee, both within and outside of a rehabilitation process, then I say “just ask for it”….and work with your employer to develop a program and schedule that works for both of you.
In keeping with our passion for Occupational Therapy, and our desire to share the benefits of this with all those that need it, we have started the process of moving away from the name “Entwistle Power” to something more reflective of what we actually do.
After all, if occupational therapy is “the art and science of enabling engagement in everyday living, through occupation; of enabling people to perform the occupations that foster health and well-being; and of enabling a just and inclusive society so that all people may participate to their potential in the daily occupations of life (CAOT)”, then more simply defined, it is providing “Solutions For Living.”
As an organization our goal remains to provide these solutions to our clients, communities, faithful blog readers and social media followers as we continue to grow and deliver the same great quality service and expertise.
We hope you will continue to follow us as we provide you Solutions For Living through our new and improved website solutionsforliving.ca filled with helpful articles, videos, tools and resources.
The number one cause of spinal cord injury is car accidents, but falls in the elderly are also rising as precipitating factor. Those suffering from a spinal cord injury struggle with mobility, bowel and bladder control, muscle spasms, and many other secondary effects of being unable to walk or use their upper body. Occupational Therapists are integral to the process of adjusting to life post spinal cord injury as we look at all areas of function and promote independence through creative solutions to immobility.
Learn more about the solutions an Occupational Therapist provides in the following infographic.
Learn more about living with a spinal cord injury in our previous blog post: Spinal Cord Injury 101 – Julie’s Picks.
When it comes to eating well, taking time to plan your meals is the number one way to ensure you eat healthy. It prevents reactive eating, saves time, money and ensures you eat a healthier diet.
Each Saturday or Sunday take time to plan your menu for the week ahead and shop accordingly. Doing so will save those extra trips to the grocery store or drive-thru which cost you time and money.
Use our FREE printable Weekly Meal Planner to help! Simply print and fill out each week.
For more helpful tools visit our Printable Resources page.
The most utilized room in any home is the kitchen. Whether you enjoy cooking, or find it a daunting task, the kitchen is the place where you spend a great deal of time. The following video from our OT-V series discusses simple solutions to make life a little easier and safer in the kitchen, saving you time and energy.
In my work as an Occupational Therapist I am often asked to help people learn to manage or improve their behavior. Things they want to stop or start doing, and how to get there, become the topic of our treatment sessions. But my response in these situations is often the same and my approach is to encourage people make “lifestyle” and not just “behavior” changes when it comes to improving function or health. After all, if behavior (be·hav·ior) is: “the way in which one acts or conducts oneself, especially toward others” and a lifestyle (life·style) is: “the way in which a person or group lives”, then there is a difference between acting and living. My job is to coach the latter.
Modifying behavior helps, but how do we turn this into a lifestyle? By forming healthy habits. In the words of Jim Rohn: “motivation is what gets you started… Habit is what keeps you going!”
Use our Daily Habit Tracker to help you work turn your new healthy habits into a lifestyle.
Simply print, fill in your goals or “habits” and record each day if these goals were or were not met.
Learn more about turning your healthy goals into lifestyle changes in our post: Healthy is a Lifestyle, Not Just a Behaviour.
Access more helpful tools for children and adults on our printable resources page.