Can My OT Do My VT?

"We love OTs working on visual perception, and they can even do some free space depth perception and focusing flexibility exercises. However, anything farther than that? You're going to want to consult your friendly local neighborhood behavioral optometrist, and especially if they happen to have a certified optometric vision therapist working on staff with them, as myself".

Today, Jessica Liedke discusses the differences between occupational therapy and vision therapy.

While occupational therapy aims to help individuals live independently by retraining everyday skills, concentration, memory, among other things, vision therapists specialize in visual outcomes and causes for developmental delays.
Although occupational therapists have some training in visual skills, they lack the licensures to use optometric tools like lenses and prisms that vision therapists rely on.
Collaboration between OT's and VT's is definitely important for comprehensive treatment.

In this episode you’ll hear about:

(01:08) What is Occupational Therapy?
(05:02) Some of the things that OT’s don’t do
(09:25) Can OT’s do Vision Therapy?

Occupational Therapy or Vision Therapy? 

Read the episode transcript here 

Check out our Digital Programs

• 4d Built to Read Digital Program
• Concussion Recovery
• Built to Drive

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Transcript

Dr. Juanita Collier: Welcome to the It Could Be Your Eyes podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Juanita Collier. Through my decades of work in the field of vision, I have met thousands of patients, parents, educators, therapists, and doctors searching for solutions to the seemingly unsolvable. Challenging traditional medicine's new normal?

We'll uncover that the root cause isn't necessarily what you thought it might be. It could be your eyes. 

Hi there. Thanks for tuning in for another exciting. adventure with It Could Be Your Eyes, the podcast. My name is Jess Liedke. I'm a vision therapist and I work with 4D Vision Gym and Dr. Juanita Collier. I'm typically the co host of this podcast, but today you've got just me talking a little bit about the differences between occupational therapy and vision therapy.

So, you may be wondering what occupational therapy is. And basically, occupational therapy is a mode of therapy whose goal is to help people live as independently as possible. So, for some people, that may mean the retraining of everyday skills like getting dressed or preparing for food. For some people, it's about concentration and memory and cognitive skills.

For many others, it's about movement and perception and sensory integration. And for a lot of our kiddos, we are working on skills that they need for school, like fine motor skills for handwriting or gross motor skills for balance and core muscle control and ability to integrate changes in textures or even moving and manipulating their space.

And so we have a lot of friends in the OT space and the occupational therapy space that we may refer to when we see issues. such as primitive reflexes that haven't been integrated. And primitive reflexes are those things that when we're born, we have these built in responses to our environment that help us survive as infants.

And so that's like the grasping reflex. Our babies will latch onto your finger or the sucking reflex, how babies know how to nurse. It's the startle reflex. They throw their arms up and then cover themselves up when they're startled. And these kinds of reflexes are things that we're supposed to have. And then we're supposed to kind of lose as we grow older.

And if we don't lose them, then that can create some issues with different things like emotional regulation, or even when it comes to a visual sense, our focusing power and flexibility may not be as. strong if we hadn't integrated things like, you know, our ATNR and STNR. The long story short is that if we have not developed in the way that we're supposed to, certain skills are going to be harder for us down the road.

Many OTs are very well skilled in being able to assess this and then be able to treat it. That's a very OT sort of thing. And there are even some vision therapists and vision therapy doctors who are well skilled in this area. But for us at 4D, we like to refer out to that. We like to stay in our lane. We know vision, and we know that primary reflexes or primitive reflexes do impact vision, but we know how to deal with the visual outcomes and the visual causes for developmental delays, not the other way around.

So when we really strongly suspect that could be an issue for our patient, we refer out to our OT friends. We also collaborate very closely with our friends who are in vision therapy and occupational therapy concurrently. And so we talk about the different things that we're working with, because a lot of times some of our skills overlap.

In occupational therapy, they are professionals that are trained to know how to help develop tracking skills. They know about pursuits, saccades, fixations, the important visual skills that are necessary for the very foundational visual needs of our world. What they do not have as much training in is focusing or binocularity.

Now, they have some small part of their training that does deal with these things. Thank goodness they're able to be spotting these issues. They are able to be screening for these issues. They know what to look for when there may be something beyond tracking or visual perception. But, it is not within an occupational therapist's licensure in most states to be able to use lenses.

prisms, filters, other optometric tools that we use in vision therapy to be able to treat a lot of the very common visual conditions that we find in our world. So while we are able to collaborate and correlate our treatments so that kiddos and adults get everything that they need, when they need it, how they need it, where they need it, our occupational therapy friends cannot in most cases enact full vision therapy treatment plans. 

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There are times when occupational therapists may be able to enact a full vision therapy treatment plan when that therapist has created a relationship with an optometrist and is able to basically pull out or follow a treatment plan that is prescribed by the doctor.

In that way, the therapist is working under the license of the optometrist, just like I do. I'm a vision therapist. I'm not an optometrist. I'm not allowed to. treat patients on my own without the oversight of my resident optometrist. So that's why Dr. Collier and I work very closely, but she is involved in every single one of my members treatments.

When it comes to things like 4D Built to Read or these digital programs that we use with a lot of our members who do not come into our office, they are able to do these programs without even an initial exam or a official visual diagnosis. The reason for that is that we know that these skills are foundational.

That they help improve everybody's visual functioning, and they do not use those lenses or prisms or filters where we're not allowed to. A lot of families do ask though, okay, so it doesn't use any of these tools. Can my child's OT do 4D Belt to Read with my child in their sessions? The answer is yes, but.

We often encourage our children that we work with to bring their exercises to their OTs and work with them as long as it doesn't involve lenses, prisms, or things that are not within that practitioner's licensure. And, we also know that programs like 4D Built to Read are only as effective as they are, only as effective as we tout, when the program is done consistently.

Day after day, every single day, as much as possible, 15 to 20 minutes a day. If a child is only doing their 4D Belt to Read program exercises with their OT when they see them once or twice a week, they're not getting the full benefit of the program and they're not able to really utilize and access all the program benefits that could be there if they were doing it at home with their parents.

Long story short, can OTs do VT? Short answer, no. Long answer, if they, A, have a established strong relationship with a optometrist who can prescribe a specific vision therapy plan and the OT can work under the license of the optometrist. B. If they are doing very foundational exercises that work on the things that are within an OT's scope of practice and knowledge, then by all means, please, we love OTs working on tracking.

We love OTs working on visual perception. And they can even do some free space depth perception and focusing flexibility exercises. However, anything farther than that? You're going to want to consult your friendly local neighborhood behavioral optometrist, and especially if they happen to have a certified optometric vision therapist working on staff with them, as myself, and even if they're Therapists are not certified.

They at least are working very closely with their behavioral optometrist on staff. That is our short and sweet episode for today. I am. Thankful to all of our occupational therapy friends who we work with here locally, and even some o OTs that we've spoken with around the country. We're excited to be able to partner with you further if you yourself are an occupational therapist and you're interested in working with us a little bit more extensively on how we do the 4d built to read program, how you might be able to get access to that for your patients that are your clients. And if you're interested in further training with the visual system, we'd love to talk to you. So please do reach out to us at 4dvisiongym. com. And we would love to talk to you about how we do that and how we might be able to partner in the meantime, everybody have a great week and we will see you soon.

Jessica Liedke: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the It Could Be Your Eyes Podcast.To schedule an appointment with Dr. Collier, visit us@4dvisiongym.com. To train your vision at home, visit us at 4D vision therapy@home.com. Rate and review our podcast and email a screenshot to receive 10% off a new evaluation or any of our digital programs. Subscribe to join us for more eye-opening episodes as we dive deep into all the ways that it could be your eyes.