Collaborative Therapy for a Better Community

By Grace Collins ‘22, October 19, 2023

IC students conduct research while providing treatment for stroke patients.

Across Ithaca College’s School of Health Sciences and Human Performance (HSHP), students fill labs, classrooms, and clinics, all working to help communities live healthy lives. When students aren’t learning about cuttingedge treatments, they’re going one step further—conducting research and creating new knowledge to innovate treatment protocols and help provide patients with the best possible outcomes.

One area in which IC has gained prominence is in the field of stroke treatment and rehabilitation, most notably through the Center for Life Skills (CLS). Offered in collaboration with the Longview Senior Living Community, located just a mile up the road from IC’s campus, CLS is a community partnership working to enhance participants’ quality of life. Interdisciplinary teams of faculty and students provide customized treatment and rehabilitation for those who have experienced neurological impairments, such as strokes.

Since founding CLS in 2001, Melinda Cozzolino, associate professor and chair of occupational therapy, estimates that over 8,000 HSHP students have been involved with the program. “The first year, we ran it as an experimental program across the occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech-language pathology, and therapeutic recreation departments,” Cozzolino said. “It was really born out of HSHP faculty trying to find a way to get our students to work together. People who have neurological injuries like strokes need treatment across all fields, so we decided to create a program that treats people with neurological deficits, where all of our students could come and work with those patients.”

Doubling the Impact

After compiling a 79-page proposal, Cozzolino received a 2002 grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration, a federal agency tasked with increasing access to health care. Each department integrated CLS into their undergraduate and graduate curriculum, and the program has been sustained ever since.

IC students have provided continuous treatment to over 200 patients, many of whom return to CLS year after year to continue receiving rehabilitative services. CLS also fills a gap in the local community, furthering IC’s commitment as a private college for the public good. “There is not a comprehensive stroke rehab program or neurological program for over an hour drive from Ithaca,” said Cozzolino. “This program really has a double impact. It’s an interprofessional experiential learning opportunity, giving our students experience working with one another how they will in clinical settings, and we fill a need in this rural area by treating folks with neurological deficits.”

“We’re all communicating to try to enhance that person’s quality of life.”

Melinda Cozzolino, associate professor and chair of occupational therapy

The program also enables faculty members like Cozzolino and Catherine Gooch, director of clinical education and clinical assistant professor in the department of recreation and leisure studies, to conduct pedagogical research into the impact experiential learning opportunities have on students.

In a study Cozzolino conducted, which compared the results between those students who did and those who didn’t have experience working with CLS, she found that students involved with the center had a better understanding of the roles of other disciplines and felt more comfortable communicating in a clinical setting. “A lot of this work is centered around the interprofessional education piece and the benefits of students working together,” Cozzolino said. “That’s the beautiful thing about CLS. We’re running groups, we’re running individual sessions, and we’re all communicating to try to enhance that person’s quality of life.”

Setting Up Boot Camp

CLS also allows students and faculty alike the opportunity to put cutting-edge treatment protocols into practice. While the term “boot camp” may conjure thoughts of a grueling military-style workout, Shannon L. Scott, assistant professor of occupational therapy at Ithaca College, had a different goal in mind: helping recovering stroke patients improve their quality of life using a modified format.

Senior-level students learned about adaptive dressing devices, such as the long-handled reacher. (Photo by Allison Usavage '11)

In fall 2021, Scott collaborated with CLS to conduct a pilot program of an upper-extremity modified constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT) stroke “boot camp” treatment. CIMT is an intensive, evidence-based regimen for fostering upper-extremity motor recovery for stroke survivors. During her career as a neurorehabilitation consultant, Scott amassed an extensive clinical and research background in neuro rehab, particularly working with stroke patients, and saw firsthand the impact it had on patients and their rehab process. “I got to see what was actually happening in clinics,” she said. “My sense was that there are really awesome things happening out there, but there’s also, at times, less evidence-based practices.” She wanted to make those best practices available to the local community, and applied for and received funding from IC’s Center for Faculty Excellence Instructional Development Fund to launch the treatment program.

During the two-day boot camp, 20 graduate students from IC’s Advanced Adult EvidenceBased Practice course worked with six Longview community members who had suffered strokes. The course is cotaught by Scott and Cozzolino, who also assisted in facilitating the program.

Because a typical CIMT treatment would take place over a series of weeks, the students implemented a modified version, where participants carried out a series of everyday tasks, like making lunch and doing light household chores, with their unaffected arm restrained. This allowed them to fully rely on their affected arm in the hopes of facilitating increased use and motor control in that limb.

For the students who took part, it was more than an experiential learning opportunity; it also gave them a chance to give back to the local community. “The professors within the OT department are fantastic,” said Rachel Valentino ’21, MS ’22. “They give us the opportunity to actually positively affect someone. It reminds me of why I chose this career path to begin with.”

Carley Teachout ’21, MS ’22, said the boot camp allowed them to step outside of their comfort zone and practice skills like pre- and post-assessment testing and customizing treatment after building a rapport with a patient. “Being able to work in teams provided more resources, and having our professors walking around helped improve our quality of care, it encouraged us to ask questions and fostered a greater learning environment,” said Teachout. “My main takeaway from the weekend is that progress looks different for each person, and listening to the participant or client helps to better understand how to provide effective and meaningful treatment.”

The boot camp was a success for participants and students alike. Some participants showed improvements in their baseline testing after just two days of treatment, and students indicated a significant increase in their confidence administering treatments like CIMT.

Creating New Knowledge

Outside of the clinic, faculty and students continue to do work that improves the quality of life of stroke patients. IC students are able to get involved with faculty-sponsored research projects—an integral part of the curriculum across HSHP programs— early in their undergraduate careers.

Students worked with stroke survivors at the boot camp program in fall 2022. (Photo submitted)

Students also have the chance to share their findings with the wider industry. The annual Occupational Therapy Graduate Research Colloquium is an opportunity for students to celebrate their progress and present their research findings to the wider Ithaca College community. Select teams then take their research to the next level, with IC students regularly sharing poster presentations at the American Occupational Therapy Association conferences. “Our students are really engaged, and that’s so exciting,” said Scott. “When we have students go to conferences, we get to demystify that element of the research process and show students that we can get this work presented and published. It really helps to gain their confidence and increase their understanding of how they can contribute to the professional knowledge base.”

Scott also spoke to the impact that the students’ research will have on their treatment protocols in clinical settings: “They really intimately learn the evidence and the treatment and best practices from their research projects,” she said. “When those students go out into the field, they can take what they now know and apply to their own practice. But hopefully, they can also have influence and educate where they’re at, sharing their findings with other clinicians.”

Bringing It All Together

The formal student research process begins in the spring of the students’ senior year, where they either form groups and address an existing research topic with a faculty member or work independently and develop a thesis under the guidance of an advisor and research committee. Billed as the culminating event in the occupational therapy degree curriculum, presenting at the Occupational Therapy Graduate Research Colloquium is required of all degree candidates and marks the completion of three semesters of research. “This was by far the most scared I’ve been to give a presentation,” said Kelli Friedman ’22, MS ’23. “It is hard to conceptualize a year and a half of work being shared in 20 minutes. But in the moment, I felt proud and excited.” Friedman’s research study, “Brace Yourself, Things Are Getting Out of Hand: Stroke Survivors’ Perspectives on Use of Wrist–Hand Orthotics for Secondary Impairments,” explored stroke survivors’ experiences using orthoses, or braces, to manage secondary symptoms after stroke. The research team consisted of Friedman and classmates Daniela Alunni, Jill Geline, Angelica Grubic, Isabelle Karman, Caitlin McGrinder, Jacqueline Mirabile, Shannon Sedita, Maura Smith, and Mackenzie Wood.

“They give us the opportunity to actually positively affect someone. It reminds me of why I chose this career path to begin with.”

Rachel Valentino ’21, MS ’22

The researchers worked directly with stroke survivors, deploying a mixed-method approach to collect data via surveys and interviews. “We are lucky enough in the IC OT program to get to work with clients very early on, as early as our sophomore year,” said Friedman. “We would not have been able to conduct this research, which aims to fill a gap, without the stroke survivors themselves.”

Gaining Insight

Student–faculty collaboration is a key element of the research projects. Mentored by Scott, the group worked closely with her to develop their research methodology, analyze and interpret data, and address issues that arose throughout the project—like needing to start from scratch just months before the colloquium after survey data was contaminated by “bot” responses. “In working with these students, I feel that it was a collaboration between the students and myself as faculty, in that we learned from and alongside each other during the process,” said Scott. “This included dealing with unexpected events resulting in the need to creatively problem-solve, adapt, and critically reason. Seeing these students academically, professionally, and personally grow is such a heartwarming and rewarding experience for me, and a testament that they are well prepared to impact positive change wherever their journey takes them.”

The research study also gave students the chance to translate the concepts they’ve studied in the classroom into clinical situations. Additionally, in working on their projects, students get hands-on experience in everything from developing research methods and working through the Institutional Review Board process to collecting and analyzing data to form insights. “Students present on diverse topics that will contribute to the practice and teaching in the field of occupational therapy,” said Amie Germain, associate professor and chair of the occupational therapy graduate program. “As a department, we feel that engaging students directly with the research process allows them to directly immerse in the learning experience, helping to hone their skills as both consumers and producers of evidence.”

Learning for a Lifetime

“At Ithaca, we’re constantly reminded to prioritize client-centered care, meaning that the client should be in control of their rehabilitation,” said Angelica Grubic ’22, MS ’23. “Interviewing real clients gave me an opportunity to apply these concepts we are told to practice by. Treating clients should be a conversation, not an ultimatum.”

In addition to giving students a platform to share their research, the colloquium also gave the cohort the opportunity to learn from one another. As the research groups worked independently, many students weren’t aware of how other groups conducted their research or what they were finding. “I loved hearing from my peers about what they have been exploring and finding because this is one of the few classes that is completely different for everyone. There was a sense of pride as these presentations conclude our coursework at Ithaca College and are a sendoff for our final fieldwork before we take our boards and start practicing,” said Friedman

New Six-Year Doctor of Occupational Therapy Degree Program

The inaugural cohort of the new six-year undergraduate-plus-doctoral degree program in occupational therapy (OT) in the School of Health Sciences and Human Performance has been fielded and classes have begun at IC. Students will earn a bachelor’s degree in occupational science after four years and a doctor of occupational therapy degree (OTD) at the end of their sixth year. It replaces the current five-year bachelor’s and master’s degree program for new applicants. Students currently enrolled in the five-year program will continue in it. The stand-alone professional entry level master’s program has been replaced by a three-year standalone OTD.

Click here to learn more.