Allied Health Core Courses

This course provides fundamental knowledge of effective communication techniques that are essential to developing interpersonal relationships. Content includes the communication process, levels of communication, barriers to communication, effective communication techniques, and interpersonal relationship skills.

This course is designed to give the student an overview of the Occupational and Physical Therapy professions. The history and development of the professions, scope of practice and roles of the health care personnel are discussed. Also reviewed will be professional competencies, role delineations in practice, case studies, practice models, medical abbreviations, safety issues, current issues, trends, and ethical and legal practice.

This course is geared for the student or health care professional who wants to become involved with healthcare research. Basic concepts are presented along with real-world examples. This course will address selected topics and statistical procedures that are common to medical research in general and specifically to allied health care. It is a goal of this course to aid the student to become an “educated consumer” of healthcare research.

Clinical disorders and diseases commonly treated by physical and occupational therapy are presented. Pathology, etiology, diagnosis, signs and symptoms and prognosis will be discussed. This course is designed to give a background on clinical conditions the PTA and OTA student will encounter during clinical education experiences/fieldwork.

This course is designed to give the student a basic understanding of normal human body movment as related to skeletal, articular, neurological and muscular systems. Anatomical palpation and biomechanical principles are also included.

This combined occupational therapy and physical therapy course shall introduce principles and techniques of client/patient handling and activities of daily living. The students shall have the opportunity with other classmates to experience and demonstrate the basics needed for moving, positioning, planning and training clients for daily living management and mobility. Basic skills required of occupational therapy assistants and physical therapist assistants (as utilized in a variety of clinical settings with client/patients from various cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds) are most effectively learned experientially. These skills provide a strong foundation for future competence in treatment planning and implementation. This course is offered early in the curriculum to introduce and focus on the individual with disabilities society and in relation to practice. It is required for both OTA and PTA students to enhance team collaboration. This course is a foundation course offered in the first semester of the first year. It provides the students with an introduction to patient care, foundational intervention and an introductory understanding to the practice as an OTA and PTA. The course builds upon concepts presented in AHLT 104R Introduction to OT/PT and OCTA 110R Fundamentals of OT.

The allied health clinician may be treating patients with ligamentous sprains and muscular or tendinous strains. Knowledge of clinical taping/ wrapping for edema control and musculo-skeletal support is a useful additional skill for those interested in working with patients with orthopedic or sports medicine clinical diagnoses. This occasionally-offered course will introduce indications, contraindications, and precautions for taping and wrapping, in addition to the necessary supplies and general considerations. The participant will learn taping and/or wrapping techniques for arch support, shin splints, ankle sprains, Achille’s tendon strains, collateral ligament sprains of the knee, various toe, patello-femoral, hip and shoulder dysfunctions, and strains to the biceps, thumb, hamstrings tendons.

This course focuses on the use of water as a therapeutic environment alternative to land based rehabilitation. Basic hydrotherapy physics, safety and rationale for aquatic therapy will be discussed. The course will also cover the fundamental techniques and the major aquatic therapy techniques commonly in use today. The student will have opportunity to practice these techniques in a pool setting, and devise a treatment plan progressing from aquatic therapy to land-based treatments.

In interdisciplinary teams, students will explore the management process and how it relates to physical therapy and occupational therapy practice, employment acquisition, ethics, liability and reimbursement.

Students will gain a basic understanding of the central nervous system and peripheral nervous system (with autonomic nervous system components) in regards to anatomy, neuro-development and function. The course will clarify the neural foundations for understanding human development, clinical neuropathology, neural screening/observation methods, and neurorehabilitation approaches. This course is offered the first semester of the senior year and draws upon concepts learned in AHLT 123R Clinical Kinesiology, AHLT 112R Clinical Conditions, OCTA 212R Developmental Disabilities, and OCTA 214R Physical Disabilities as these courses introduced by typical and atypical conditions that effect the nervous system of the human body.