RECREATIONAL
THERAPY CLASSES
Here's a list of specific Recreational Therapy Classes that were required in the program at the University of Utah:
RECTH 3330: Foundations in Recreational Therapy
RECTH 3360: Assessment, Documentation, and Evaluation in Recreational Therapy
RECTH 4300: Recreational Therapy and Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities
RECTH 4310: Recreational Therapy and Older Adults
RECTH 4320: Recreational Therapy and Physical Medicine
RECTH 4330: Recreational Therapy and Mental Health
RECTH 5300: Management in Recreational Therapy
RECTH 5350: Advancement of Recreational Therapy: Clinical Analysis
RECTH 5360: Techniques and Facilitation in Recreational Therapy
DOCUMENTATION
Here you will find documents that both fortify my professional credentials and expand my personal beliefs on recreational therapy.
PERSONAL STATEMENT
As a college graduate and a professional in the field of recreational therapy, looking back on previous years and all the different ideas I had about what different professions I wanted to go into, I can honestly say that when I discovered recreational therapy and explored what it is and the benefits gained from it, everything clicked for me. All throughout growing up, I knew I wanted to help people achieve their goals in life, but I didn’t know what career path would put me in that position. Along with that desire, I knew I had to use the disability I was born with, Cerebral Palsy, and the many characteristics that I have developed through learning to live with a disability, which include determination, resilience, and patience, to do as much good as I could in the world; I simply always knew that I had been given a disability with the charge of using the experiences I had to be able to relate to others and help see them through their own trials. Needless to say, practicing therapeutic recreation allows me to accomplish my personal goal by enabling me to help others accomplish theirs.
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Recreational therapy has been given some very effective definitions that capture its essence very well. When I think about how I define it in my own words, I tend to focus on the overall goal or outcome of a recreational therapist- empowering patients. Recreational therapists work with other professionals to identify and implement strategies that help an individual work towards and eventually reach goals that are set to put them in a better position in their life. These goals can be aimed towards physical, mental, emotional, or other areas of one’s health. A recreational therapist’s role in helping to get the patient to the set goal is to use the type(s) of recreation that will benefit the patient and the process the most. I certainly have a very strong belief in recreation and its ability to enhance lives based of off my experiences of how recreation has always improved my life and the condition of my disability.
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It is both shocking and exciting for me to realize how strongly I believe in recreational therapy and what it stands for. As a newly certified professional, I look forward to being driven through a wonderful career in this field by my passion for using recreation to increase and positively impact one's quality of life. My main goal as a professional in this field is to be able to put all my knowledge, effort, and skills into empowering people and enhancing lives. Although I have not decided a population that I want to dedicate my career to as I want to keep an open mind throughout the rest of my education, I can see myself focusing on working with people with physical and mental disabilities. I have already done some work with this specific population in both high school and college and although I still want to explore all options, I see myself devoting my career to helping those who I can relate to on some level. No matter what direction I decide to pursue, I am truly elated to practice in this amazing, life-changing field.
ASSESSMENT PROTOCOL
Here is an Assessment Protocol I did. For the facility, I chose Shriners Hospital for Children. The assessments I use include an interview that I created, the Therapeutic Recreation Activity Assessment , and the Comprehensive Evaluation in Recreational Therapy (CERT) for Physical Disabilities.
CASE STUDY 1
Here is a case study that I did on a client during a clinical rotation at Kauri Sue Hamilton School. In this document, you will see that I completed a diagnostic protocol for the client, did an interview with the client, and planned and implemented an intervention with the client. Of course, for confidentiality reasons, the client's name was changed in the documentation.
CLIENT ASSESSMENT
This is an assessment that I did on a client who was at a skilled nursing facility that I did a clinical rotation at. In this assessment, I gathered information about the client's life, all aspects of the client's functioning, and the client's goals and interests in order to analyze and determine how best the recreational therapy services at the facility could provide care for the client.  For confidentiality reasons, the client's name was changed.
ASSESSMENT AND EVIDENCE-BASED TREATMENT PLAN
Here is an assessment that I did on a client who was a resident at a rehab facility that I did one of my clinical rotations at. Along with the assessment is an evidence-based treatment plan that I developed for the resident based on the findings of her assessment. For confidentiality reasons, the client's name was changed.
CASE STUDY 2
Here is another case study that I have done. This one, however, was a case study on a client made up by one of my professors. I had to read all of the information on the client, do research on his diagnosis- conduct disorder, identify areas of concern, and give specific reasoning as to why he would benefit from recreational therapy.
RECREATIONAL THERAPY DEPARTMENT MANUAL
Here is a Recreational Therapy Department Manual that four of my fellow classmates and I wrote over the course of our last semester of the Recreational Therapy Program. We wrote this fifty page manual as though it were for a memory care facility. It includes information such as risk management, program development, job descriptions and competencies, and much more.
ETHICAL DECISION-MAKING PROCESS
This is a documented ethical decision-making process that a group of my fellow classmates and I created. We were given a scenario (found in the document) and had to analyze the situation in order to come up with a list of different actions we would take as a therapist should we find ourselves in a similar position. We had to thoroughly discuss and decide how ethical each reaction to the situation would be and any implications that would stem from them.
INTERVENTION PROTOCOL
This is an intervention protocol that I wrote based off of an intervention I developed titled "Developing Me and My Relationships". The intervention is geared towards children with Cerebral Palsy and has a primary goal of assisting clients with self exploration while developing skills to socially engage with people in their lives and advocate for themselves in an effective manner.