A Reflection on the Eleanor Clark Slagle Lecture by Gordon Muir Giles

     In 2018 the Eleanor Clark Slagle award was given to Gordon Muir Giles, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA. Giles attended St. Andrew's School of Occupational Therapy on the grounds of St. Andrew's Hospital in the United Kingdom. In the 1980's, when Giles attended school, St. Andrews Hospital was the UK's premiere psychiatric hospital.  When Giles was accepted into the occupational therapy program, he was one of the first four students to have already obtained a bachelor's degree. Most of the other students admitted came in straight from high school. While Giles was attending school, he volunteered at Kemsley, a unit at St. Andrew's Hospital for people with neurologically based behavioral disorders. After graduation, Giles joined the rehabilitation team at Kemsley. 

     Some other events that happened in the year 2018, when this award was received was the #MeToo Movements going global and the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. 

    I chose this particular topic to write about, because I am interested in the cognitive side of occupational therapy. In the lecture, Giles describes a personal experience with someone he worked with at Kemsley. He explained how he worked with a client that was admitted to the Kemsley who suffered from severe memory impairment. A memory impairment would be described as not being able to remember something. In the lecture, Giles used the example of his client having the physical ability to bathe and dress himself but not being able to organize the subtasks into a typical morning routine. Another example he used was when his client brushed his teeth 8 times in a row because the client couldn't remember that he had just completed the task after doing it. 

    I believe Giles wrote about neurocognitive rehabilitation because of his experience working with his client who he called Dave, at Kemsley. Dave suffered from severe cognitive impairment and Giles had to be creative in his treatment plan to not aggravate and upset Dave. I learned that as an OT, you need to be adaptive. You have to adapt to the way each of your clients act and react to their treatment. Giles gave an example about how he had to change the type of soap Dave was using in his treatment process. Dave did not like the way the switch was made and Giles had to adapt and come up with a new way to get Dave on board with the switch. 

   Giles, G. M. (2018). 2018 Eleanor Clarke Slagle Lecture—Neurocognitive rehabilitation: Skills or strategies? American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 72, 7206150010. https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2018.726001