OTS 014: A Discussion On School-Based Report Writing
- Jayson Davies
- Sep 16, 2018
- 37 min read
Updated: Mar 23
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Welcome to the show notes for Episode 14 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast.
In this episode, Jayson interviews Jason Gonzales of DoubleTimeDocs.com (Affiliate link for your convenience) about some of the Laws, regulations and state guidelines that help OTs understand what should be in (or omitted from) our reports. Also discussed is when you should use standardized assessments, how to choose what assessment to use, and how to decrease the amount of time it takes to complete an OT evaluation report.
Get your free 7-day trial to DTD and use promo code FALL18 for 20% off your order for a limited time. (Now Available for PTs as well)
Links to Show References:
Want to see the unedited webinar including all of the weird hand gestures we make? Watch the full webinar complete with live feedback and Q&A, HERE!
The NY Times Article:
Sharp Rise in Occupational Therapy Cases at New York’s Schools by Elizabeth A Harris who covers Education at The New York Times. This 2015 article documents the dramatic increase of students receiving occupational services in New York and Chicago.
Find your State Guidelines:
We have compiled all of the OT and OT/PT State Guidelines on one easy clickable map for you! Check it out here to find your state's guidelines.
Be sure to subscribe to the OT School House email list & get access to our free downloads of Gray-Space paper and the Occupational Profile for school-based OTs.
Have any questions or comments about the podcast? Email Jayson at Jayson@otschoolhouse.com
Well,
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Episode Transcript
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Amazing Narrator
Hello and welcome to the OT schoolhouse podcast. Your source for the latest school based occupational therapy tips, interviews and research now to get the conversation started, here are your hosts, Jayson and Abby. Class is officially in session.
Jayson Davies
Hello everybody. And welcome to episode number 14 of the OT school house Podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about how to write effective and quicker assessments. This is actually going to be a replay of our live Facebook webinar that we did two weeks ago. That was actually the first time that we had ever done a live webinar on Facebook, and Jayson Gonzalez and I got hopped on there and answered some questions from others, as well as dropped some knowledge on the ways that we tried to make our assessments as reliable as possible, as ethical as possible, as well as speed it up a little bit, but make sure that we get all the information in there that the parents, the teachers and maybe even the advocate or lawyers might want to see, should it come to that. So be sure to stick around. We're going to get into that in just a minute, but first, I do want to say next week, or sorry, two weeks from now, the next podcast is going to be a very special interview. And doing that interview actually, Abby is going to be returning, so she will be back around. I know some of you have been wondering where she's been. Well, she's back, and she's gonna be conducting an interview with another occupational therapist on vision rehab. And so stick around for that. I've listened to a part of that recording already, and I can tell you right now you will not want to miss that. It's going to be fantastic. So that will be released sometime in early October. So stick around for that. With that said, we're going to hop into today's interview with Jayson Gonzalez. And like I said, this was a replay from a live webinar that we did a few weeks back. And if you'd like to watch that entire webinar, be sure to click on over to the show notes at ot schoolhouse.com, forward slash episode 14, and we'll have a link to the entire webinar if you want to see everything. This is going to be a slightly edited version of that, but it's still some great content. So stick around. Jayson is going to go over a brief introduction of who he is and the experiences that he has been through to get to the point where he has created double time docs, and then you will hear the rest of our webinar together. So go ahead and hit that subscribe button, put your phone in your pocket and relax, and I will check back in with you in about 45 minutes. Here's Jayson Gonzalez,
Jason Gonzalez
so like Jayson said, I've been an occupational therapist for 16 years, and I moved from New York to Maui to San Diego, to Oakland, to new to Massachusetts, then back to Jersey. So I've worked pretty much all in schools in over like 12 different school districts. And yeah, started off in New York, and when I started, I never took any peat classes. It was the first job available, and I worked in Brooklyn, and they just kind of threw me in, and they had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know really how to find a caseload or anything like that. Principal had no idea what I was doing, and I had to learn from the PT. So the PT pretty much taught me how to do an OT job, which is great. And then so I moved to Hawaii where my contract job was, and they taught me how to do assessments, but nobody really taught me how to do write an evaluation report, so I kind of had the piecemeal ones that I looked in, like through files and stuff like that, and find old reports so and just kind of figure out how people wrote evaluations. We didn't have any mentors. I think companies are much better now with providing mentors to show you how to, you know, write reports and do your job. Grant, I graduated 2001 so things probably have changed in school, also, they probably teach you better than they did for me, but here I am now. And started a company called Double time docs with my business partner, Scott Liza wit and yeah, and we found a need. I've seen lots of reports. I've had lots of parents, a lot of teachers, comment on other people's reports, including mine, and that's how I learned how to write better reports. So we're just trying to figure out why, why do we all write different reports, and why is there no standard to how we should write reports when our job across any state is pretty much the same. We look at, you know, children, how they perform in school, and you know what is impacting their education and why they can't do what you know, the average your typical child can do, and why do we all have to write different reports? Guess. So I guess we can kind of go from there.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, definitely. And so, you know, that's really what we wanted to come on here, just like share with everyone, you know, let's try and get something similar, I guess, in a way, you know, you we read a lot of OT reports that come in from one district or another or another state, and sometimes it looks so different, they're like, man, like, Am I doing my reports wrong? Like, sometimes I think that, like, what am I doing wrong? You know, this report looks so different from mine. But, you know, going through double time Docs is nice, because I've seen what you put together and and more people are kind of taking on that, that type of template a little bit. And we're going to talk about that.
Jason Gonzalez
Yeah, should we just talk about, like, a little bit about, like, how that New York Times article that showed up in, I don't know if anybody, if everybody saw but in New York Times in 2015 they wrote, she wrote an article called sharp rise in occupational therapy cases and New York City schools. And it's just amazing on how much an increase in referrals have been across the country, in all major cities. Like the example they gave is that in New York City alone, there's been a 30% increase in the number of referrals to nearly 42,000 and that's just in New York City. And in Chicago, it's 6600 students receive OT, and that's up 20% in three years. So we're just seeing an influx of evaluations and referrals, and all those kids have to be tested. And then they all, most of them have to be tested every three years. And you know, the school day doesn't is still six and a half, seven hours long. So that's not changing. And you know, even on the Facebook groups, you just see everybody talking about case loads that are like 8090 kids. Where do you find the time to write your reports? But at home and not too many people like writing reports. So very little when I hear it's one of the most common complaints I get I've seen in like the OT meetings, is that, you know, I don't have time to read the support. There's so many referrals, which will be a whole nother topic. I'm sure you'll sometime in podcast.
Jayson Davies
We'll have to do another live about that alone. Yeah, just about caseloads. So, yeah, all right. So let's get dive into that, the regulations a OTA or, sorry, first idea, the individual disabilities, Education Act. What about that? What? What have you seen that the IDEA says about ot reports or OT.
Jason Gonzalez
just like, from doing the research and doing, like, looking up, you know, a OT, a stuff, and like, how come? Why aren't there guidelines to writing reports. I mean, there are some guidelines, and they're pretty vague. They just, you know, one word answers that you should be looking at certain things. I mean, on the OT website, they said, like, since idea does not specify the process or the methods for a discipline specific evaluation, therapists should follow the OT occupational therapy practice framework. So that's probably the next thing to look at. Is what you know our job is requiring us to do our framework.
Jayson Davies
No, you're right idea. I think the only thing IDEA says about occupational therapy is, one, that we're related service, and two, it defines what we can do. It says that we can do preventative care as well, as you know, helping kids who have a disability from just about any onset, whether it's a developmental disability or some sort of traumatic disability. But it doesn't say anything about reports for ot specifically, it does say stuff about reports like eligibility for a student. But of course, as OTs, we typically aren't saying a student is eligible for special education. You know, that's that's oftentimes the psychologist, the speech therapist. So some of that stuff doesn't seem like it would really be part of what we would look at, necessarily. You know we're not giving the student a qualifying condition. We're not doing one of the 13 qualifying conditions. We're just saying that that qualifying condition is affecting the student's ability to access their education, and this is how we can help. So yeah, idea not a lot of help when it comes to actually how to write an assessment or what we need to do an assessment. So then, like you said that we jumped down to a OTA, which a OT, a you just said, kind of says, look at the practice guidelines.
Jason Gonzalez
Yeah, they also get, I mean, they tell you, you know, the every evaluation should include an OT profile, and that's, and we can discuss that when we go through content, but it's, you know, they know, they have some guidelines. They show you how to fill out an OT profile, but like, and then they reference like, the best practice book, and those do have examples of OT evaluations. But you know, I from all the reports I've seen in, you know, hundreds of therapists I've worked with. Um, I've none of them look like that from the example, so it's funny on how much they vary on, like, just structure and format. I mean, generally speaking, we all kind of cover the same thing in our reports. But, you know, be so much easier if we can just be like, this is where this is in this report. This is where this is in this report. And you know, when you get transfer students and stuff like that, and I'm sure, you know, some people have three page reports, some people have 12 page reports. And why is there such a big difference, like, why so? And I guess it's all individualized per therapist and child, but.
Jayson Davies
No, you're right. And then, so a OTA, you know, you got to do that practice the which is called the occupational profile. And, yeah, we have an example of an occupational profile that people can download@otschoolhouse.com as well. And but then you go down to the next thing, and you kind of, okay, now you've looked at idea. I have to do this. A ot a kind of has some guidelines for this. But now a lot of states have guidelines as well for school based OTs and school based PTS, and so you can find your specific states guidelines. And I know not every state has ot PT guidelines, but you can definitely check out like California, I know, has some good ones. New York State, I believe, has, I think you were saying Wisconsin has a decent.
Jason Gonzalez
Yeah, and Surrey has a good one. Illinois, I think North Carolina actually has really good one, and they actually have samples of PT and OT reports, yeah, most of the state guidelines that I was able to find. And actually, you have a lot of the state guidelines on your website, in the resource tab of your website, but they have, most of them contain both OT and PT and how to write what the evaluation should include. And it's just, you know, very general, but you can look up those some states I couldn't find. And you know, the fact that it's hard to find is probably not a good thing, even.
Jayson Davies
I can see your dog wiggling around behind you. So state guidelines, and then I also feel like I see your question. Shannon, I'm gonna ask this question. Jayson, real quick. First is district and school, you know we do? Yes, we do have guidelines, state guidelines. But then each you know, you get down to your to your individual district and school level, and they want you to do certain things too on your reports, you know they want you to have, I don't know, most of it's just general wording that they want you to use. They want you to say something this way versus another way. Or sometimes, when it comes to providing services, they kind of want to do it one way or the other way. So have you found, you know, in the district, different districts that you've worked in, they kind of want you to do it a different way?
Jason Gonzalez
Yeah, some of them, a lot of them, don't actually tell, like, the school district I've worked in, yeah, they don't really tell you much. You're just kind of free for all. And it's, uh, the one thing I did notice in some of them is, like, whether or not you include age equivalencies on like, just like, Yeah, I guess they're requirements, but they I feel like, just the fact that, you know, if I'm working with five therapists in a school district, we don't, we all write different reports. So there's, we don't have, there's not a consistency between therapists, and which makes it you know that when I did a Facebook poll last year, a lot of people did want consistency between their colleagues. It just makes it easier when you have kids going from, you know, elementary school to middle school, and you want to read a report and you just want to, you know, you don't want to read 60 reports or whatever, but if you need information, you just briefly look at it. So, I mean, it'll be great to have that a guideline. And I know, like some contract companies, that one of that work for, in particular, is that they do send out all the OTs a guideline of like, what the report should look like, which is great, and I think that's where the need is, and where the trend is starting to go, is that we just need a lot more consistency in our profession. But you know, as you know, since you mentioned the district, I haven't had a lot of people tell me that this is what your report should look like. And I think that's, you know, one of the issues that we have is that we're not covering what we need to cover, and that we don't even know what we need to cover, because nobody really has told us, and the OTA doesn't really have that much of an answer, because I've talked to them a little bit about it too. I think they're working on it.
Jayson Davies
Oh, yeah, okay. And that kind of leads a little bit into, let me we wanted to talk about content and format, which I'm going to start off, because I really want to talk about what the people out there want us to talk about. And right now, Shannon from. Texas, you know, she says that their evaluations in Texas are less formal testing and more functional observations. And, you know, I'm starting to see a trend kind of toward that out here in California, a little bit strength and weaknesses is a better view than using age equivalent so, yeah, I stopped using age equivalencies, I don't know, maybe three years ago or so?
Jason Gonzalez
Yeah, I don't use them either.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, because it's, it's at the point where we're not necessarily giving something that tells what this student can do. And I don't think if we tell a teacher they're functioning at a, you know, three year old level fine motor wise, that they're really going to change the way that they're teaching that student. And so it's more important about me giving the ideas that they can use to help that student more so than me telling them they're at a three year old level. And so that's where I think that functionality really comes into play. Because during my assessment, I can test out different things, I can test out different pencils, I can test out different types of scissors and stuff like that that are more functional. And then I can give those scissors or that pencil to the teacher, and now it doesn't matter that they're functioning at a third grade or three year old level with their fine motor skills, but they can get some more they're getting more function with the adaptive tools.
Jason Gonzalez
Yeah, I think I was just looking at some notes talking about the state guidelines in in the Missouri guideline was in Missouri, actually, in the Illinois guideline, they say in there specifically, like norm reference tests are not always necessary and often do not provide the occupational therapist or educational team with the best information. And says these tests are best safe for diagnostic purposes. If they're they should be used for specific purposes, and the information they provide should be verified with other methods. And then says, although schools may suggest that these tools are required or that they are only incredible source of information, they often are not valid for the purposes of any of an occupational therapy evaluation in school. So I thought that was kind of interesting. And then last example, Missouri guidelines says most standardized tests used by OTs and PTs that assess student abilities are very developmentally based and look at various performance components and underlying sensory motor skills. Often these standardized tests do not assess student performance within the academic setting, leaving school therapists with a difficult task of relating information to the students goals on the IEP and how to support access to the general curriculum. And I think that is another, you know, and following so many Facebook groups, that's another podcast you can have, it's goal writing, because I've seen so, I mean, people have been talking about it just, you know, as the school starts and they're reviewing IPs and just seeing how terrible some of the goals are, and how a lot of goals are based on, you know, doing better on the assessment that they test on. But it's just, you know, those are some of the things you can find on the guidelines if you find your own state guideline.
Jayson Davies
Yeah. Hey, quick question, everyone out there. I'd love to hear your responses, and if the answer is zero, so be it put zero on average, how many standardized or criterion reference tests are you using with the student when you do an assessment? Are using 01235? How many are you using? I typically probably use about two. I'll use I love the school function assessment. It's not, I mean, it's not a hands on assessment, it's a questionnaire. But I love the SFA, because it gets the teachers opinion on what the student can do. And then, typically, I will do either the bot or the M fun. Sometimes I'll throw in the ravma if I really need it. And then if it is something where sensory is a very big concern, I will use the SPM, but that that may be in instead of something else. So I would say two to three is my average. All right, so one to two, one to 311, to 230, and less, told to do by my parent, by the parents. All right, there you go. So a lot of different answers there. Good to know. Oh, my goodness, I can't keep up with it. I like scoodles more. The noodle I haven't seen that one yet. Have you seen the skenoodles? Or.
Jason Gonzalez
I have, I see a lot of people asking about it on Facebook. Maybe it's her well.
Jayson Davies
Get more information on that one.
Jason Gonzalez
Yeah, that can be another podcast, just on a second.
Jayson Davies
Oh, we got plenty of ideas. We got plenty ideas.
Jason Gonzalez
Why? For people who do like more than two or three. Like, what is it just, you know, are you doing, like, the visual motor or like, a visual perceptual standardized test and a sensory profile and something else for you? Okay,
Jayson Davies
I'll do the fine motor part on the bot, fine motor integration, fine motor precision, but then I'll do like. Like the the visual perceptual on the ram I won't do the the visual motor on the Rama, because I already did it with the bot or vice versa, but I'll do the perception. And then the SPM is obviously very unless you're doing the sensory profile, those two are kind of similar, yeah, then the SFA is very different from everything we're used to questionnaires. But, and I don't know about skenoodles, but yeah. So you don't necessarily, I pick and choose the sub test that I want to take. I'm sure most people do something like that. Yeah. So I think we kind of go over this real quick. How do you choose to do an asset? How do you choose which assessment to do and to put into your
Jason Gonzalez
report. If you well assessment, I mean, from my experience, and what I do is, what's the deficit, I guess, if the what's the reason for a referral, obviously, if it's a sensory concern, you want to do a sensory assessment. And so, you know, sometimes I just, you know, I always do an informal observation, and I always do something like, I pretty much follow the same sequence. And when we can talk about that with strategies on how to make the whole process a little bit faster, is that, regardless of age, I kind of do the same activity, and it just something I actually learned in the stone Institute of Psychiatry when I worked there. But I can see, like, I guess it's, I would kind of jump in the gun, though, but it's giving you night. It just kind of overlooks, like a whole bunch of areas in one activity. And you know, if you in that example, an observation if he's having a fine motor issue or anything like that, I'll choose to do, like the dtvp, and then, like, just seeing how he reacts with an environment and stuff like that, and what the parent and teacher concerns are. Through consultation, I will do the sensory profile or whatever is relevant. But it's, yeah, it's kind of just choosing an assessment. You choose what the issue, yeah, based on the media.
Jayson Davies
And I think that's why it's super important to start like, what you talked about earlier, going back to the occupational profile, you know, a lot of people want to sit behind their sit in their classroom, have the kid come to them, and they just want to, like, be isolated, and they just want to do their testing in the room. And like, I feel like it's OTs, we can't do that. We got to get out of our room. We got to go to got to go see the kid, potentially at recess, see them in the classroom, see them and the cafeteria. We need to call the parents and see what their concerns are. I mean, if you talk to people, you talk to the teacher and everyone, you get so much information that then, yeah, you can say, Oh, I don't need to do the I don't know, maybe you don't need to do the visual motor you know, it's not, it's not the handwriting that they're having difficulty. It's a sensory processing, or vice versa, you know, just by doing that, that profile, you can weed out some of the assessments that you may have wanted to do in the beginning. So, yeah, all right, Kristen, I don't know if she's on right now, but she had a comment earlier, and she wanted to know what the difference in reports are between different ages of kids. So do you alter your report? Or maybe on double time docs? Is the does the report change based upon how old the student is?
Jason Gonzalez
So on double time docs, if anybody's not familiar with that, it's a it's a software program that you pretty much just answer questions and write your report, long story short, and what I found is that, you know, when I look at a student, when I was developing the software or whatever, I didn't develop it, Scott, you did, and I won't take credit for that, but when I was thinking of the questions, is that, you know, every kid I test, regardless of what age, you know, preschool to high school, which I've tested, which I've worked in, every single age group, I look at the same thing. And it comes back to that activity that we can discuss later. Is that, you know, you looked at handedness. It's like the easiest thing. Are they right hand, left hand or undetermined? Um, so regardless of age, but it's all developmental like on the development of the DTD software, you answer questions that are developmentally appropriate, obviously not going to answer the question that's for written expression when it's a two and a half year old or a three year old, because, you know, it's not applicable at that age. So my template, or the program, can be used from two and a half to 22 because it covers, you know, the, you know, snipping and cutting all the way to vocational skills. Yeah. So I only use one template, and because we look at the same areas, and I guess that's what we look at content. You're looking at ADL, so you're looking at, you know, motor development, and you're looking at, you know, fine motor skills, whatever, like, all that stuff, regardless of age, you're still looking at and it's just that, just looking at different type, different things developmentally.
Jayson Davies
Yeah. And I honestly so this is the first time. I've been in a high school in five years. I'm getting back to used to being in a high school, and, you know, I'm using the template that the district has, you know, and I use that template right now. And some of the stuff, I almost feel embarrassed going into a high school. IEP and saying, your kid can use a scissors, he can imitate a straight line. My kid is 14 years old. Of course, they can imitate a straight line, but, you know, I think that is still important just to have in there, because our report, yes, it is for the parent, but it's also for the I, for the OT, the or the psychologist that we're sending that student to. When they transfer to another district and they haven't even met that student, yet they still need to know, kind of, based upon your report, what that student, you know, what to expect when they go in and see that student. So I get it, I get leaving all that stuff in, and it's important. And then you can just go above and beyond, like you said, into the vocational stuff.
Jason Gonzalez
Yeah, and you know, in the example, like, if you're talking about, like pre writing strokes on the software. It goes from like, developmentally, it goes from like, drawing, you know, straight line, diagonal line, to going to more like, simple shapes, to more complex shapes. And you know, if I'm testing a preschool kid, I will just answer those pre writing strokes or not. Preschool kid, well, I guess technically now, but it's uh, those pre writing strokes, and you're like, can he copy, you know, or draw a straight line? But then when, if I'm testing, you know, an older kid, a high school kid, it's just more, I don't answer those questions, because if he answer, if he can do an irregular shape or a simple shape, he obviously can do a straight line and then diagonal line. So I just, you have that option on the program to just click Square, circle or irregular shape. And then, to me, it's a given that, yes, you can draw horizontal and a vertical line. Yes, you know Shannon's combination reminds me of something interesting. Back to the reports. And relates to that is that I went to the OT, a school youth conference last year in Florida, and Dr lamb at the time, and she's still president whenever I follow that transition. Oh, okay, well, she had a really good speech, and she was talking about, you know, how in schools that we should be covering, she wants us to, you know, obviously empower our profession and, you know, grow it and all this stuff, and how to that. She wants school based OTs to start looking into these seven different areas. And it was like bullying, anxiety or mental health transitions, teen driving, like adaptive sports and stuff like that. And there's like, transitions. I don't know if I named that ready, but I think there's more. And after that, I went up to her, and I was a great speech, whatever, very motivating. And I told her, I was like, I have the best idea for how you can get everybody to do to cover those areas quickly. It's like, you just tell us this is what you need to put in your reports. You just had to mention it. If you want to mention bullying or anything, any of those, like small categories that you want us to cover, and you make us put in a report. You give us guidelines and say you should include transition. You should include, you know, what they do in the cafeteria, if they're being bullied, then we all have to write about that. And even we just mentioned like, Tommy is not being bullied, or is a bully, or is being bullied, everybody who reads those reports, the principal, the teacher, the parent, they will be like, Oh, OTs, can do that. They look at that. I agree. And just empower us. Now we look at much more, and then you have that 5% of our population of OTs that are like, I have an idea about that. I'm gonna make this product. I'm gonna make a better system for this like, like, social and all that stuff. Like, I brought up social thinking at a school the other day, and the speech therapist got so frustrated that I was covering social stuff. And I was like, social such a great program. I mean, you know, that's my opinion, but it's, you know, it's like we're stepping on, kind of something on other people's toes, but it's also empowering us. And I thought that was the best way. The A OTA just tells everybody, this is how you should. We usually include a report. Then we all have to kind of look at it and it's and you just empower this even more and give us a standardized guideline. That's fine with me. It's just the information that we're giving.
Jayson Davies
All right. On your next ballot, everyone needs to write in Jayson Gonzalez for President. No, but you're right. I think, you know, a ot has got a lot on their plate. But, yeah, I agree with you. You know, we need to, if no one says anything, then it's not going to change. So we got to kind of figure out, and that's honestly part of the reason that we kind of OT school house, you know, we wanted to help therapists out there. We understand that, that a lot of school based OTs were often. Alone at our site, by ourselves or and we don't see the other OTs like a rehab therapist would see the OTs in the hallways and stuff. And so that's why we kind of created the OT school house. So I'm hoping you guys are enjoying the content, and we're gonna keep it going.
Jason Gonzalez
The one thing I just wanted to mention that I found in those guidelines is, and this is a question I always come up with other OTs is like? What you should include like? So two of the Louisiana and Illinois said that there should be no reference to levels of frequency or duration of services should be cited in the evaluation report for Louisiana, Illinois says in their guidelines any recommendations regarding therapy needs as a part of the student's educational program should be made without reference to therapy levels, frequency or duration.
Jayson Davies
So they don't want you to put any recommendation in the report as far as how much ot the student needs.
Jason Gonzalez
Yeah, so that, because that always comes up, even like special ed directors in a couple school district wanted to be like, You need to put how often they're seen on the report and stuff like that. But,
Jayson Davies
okay, that's it. That's because you're right. Every district does that a little bit a little bit different. Okay, so same in Ohio. About the whole, no, don't put recommendations in there. What? No recommendation. Scary. Says Shannon. I know Shannon's in Texas. She's been going crazy, and she's been doing well on here. Frozen stream, oh, I'm sorry, Alicia, I hope it unfreezes for you here in a second. It's a team decision, yes, so that's what I'm going to speak to Gigi. Is that the way that I've been doing it the last few years, and I think I'm going to have to stop because of the district that I'm on. They're doing it the same way you're talking about but I always put kind of a caveat in there. I said, Yes, I do recommend ot based upon what I think. I do think the student needs ot once a week for 25 minutes to work on this and this skill, because to make them more functional. And then I sometimes I'll even write a goal. This is the goal I'm working on, and that's why they need this much service. But then I also say this is up to the team. This is my recommendation, but ultimately, it's the team decision to say whether or not my recommendation is the way that we go or not, yeah. And so again, kind of making a caveat in there in a way, you know, kind of, again, covering your own but, you know, but yeah, that's how I was doing it for a while. Again, that's kind of up in the air, you know. And it sounds like some states don't want you to do it. Other states are okay about you doing it, and other states don't have guidelines. So it's kind of up in the air a little bit. You know, what do you do? You don't put recommendations.
Jason Gonzalez
Like, either it's recommended. I don't put anything and then, like, level service or whatever would be recommended by the team. I just say whether or not OT is recommended or not.
Jayson Davies
Okay? And then at the IEP team, you come ready with kind of a recommendation, if they agree with you that OT is needed, then you kind of speak up to twice a month, yeah, 30 minutes.
Jason Gonzalez
Yeah, yeah. And then we do the service page, I mean, but that's a whole nother. Another podcast is the whole IEP thing. Like I've been in so many school districts where they have the IEP set already, you know, written and stuff like that. And I heard that wasn't that's frowned upon, because it's a team decision. But, yeah, you know, that's hard, because all that paperwork.
Jayson Davies
As long as they edit it during the during the IEP, it should be okay. They shouldn't be coming and just saying, Here's your IEP sign this, you know, yeah, like, a lot of districts now they have technology, yeah, it's a draft. And a lot of schools now have the technology where they're putting it up on the wall so everyone can see it while they're live editing it.
Jason Gonzalez
Yeah, that's what, yeah, another school district, they used to write it during the IEP.
Jayson Davies
And that's the thing, is, like, every OT is every ot does a little bit different. Every district does a little bit different. Some people, some schools, and I don't want to jump down this rabbit hole, but some schools are doing five times a week, OT, oh, yeah, for sensory integration. Other schools, you know, some more rural areas, are doing once a month, because there's no way, you know, the therapist goes to 11 different schools, and they just, it's, it's impossible. And so you do have to take into consideration the resources that you have available. So, yeah, I it's, it's different. Everywhere, everywhere you go, is different. And oh my goodness.
Jason Gonzalez
We used to do like, 180 minutes per year, and that was, like, every other month, 30 minutes. But it could do that. You know, if you miss a week, you can make it up and you're not like or you can front load and stuff like that. But yeah, everything's so different. It's a Yeah, at
Jayson Davies
my district, we're doing 30 sessions a year for weekly. Or 15 sessions for twice a month per year for 30 minutes. And then it calculates however total minute minutes that would be. So it's like 15 times 30 minutes per year, equaling, what is that? 450 minutes per per year? Yeah. So yeah for us.
Jason Gonzalez
Good job about being short staffed. Yeah, and I know a lot of people have made that comment, but like, I can't see him because there's no room in my schedule. That's very frowned upon. Don't do that.
Jayson Davies
No, you cannot say that, if you can justify, if you can justify, because you and your teachers have a great collaborative approach, and that you know that if you put something into place, and your teachers will carry that over, and if you if that can work in the team that you're working with, then it's not unfair to say, you know if the students going to meet their goals by doing that collaborative approach, then, by all means, go for it. You're leaving the kid in the most restrictive or in the least restrictive environment. They're getting the least amount of OT they need to be successful in the classroom. So I'm all okay with that, but you're right. Do not go in there telling a parent sorry, we're only gonna see your kid twice this year because we only have one ot at 20 schools. Yeah, no, don't go doing that. A district can't go in there saying, Sorry, we don't want to hire another ot like you just you can't idea will, well, you get sued quicker than I don't know anyone, but All right, so talked a little bit, and we kind of gone off sidetrack. We were talking about how long it takes to write a report. A lot of people were saying, I saw someone say 30 to 60 minutes, which is unbelievable for me. I guess on a good day, I can get what's that.
Jason Gonzalez
it takes me, like, 10 minutes to just to do the demographics Right?
Jayson Davies
Exactly, exactly. So that's quick, but I saw most people were kind of in the one to three hours it looked like. And so I think that kind of, you know, and of course, that's already after observing the student for a half hour, pulling the student out to work with them for an hour, if not more, scoring the assessments. If you're doing assessments, which, you know, takes a half hour, depending on how many assessments you got. And so, I mean, you're right there. You're already looking already looking at three hours, and then you have another one to three hours on top of that you're looking at. Basically, it takes one full work day, of course, spread out, but about one full work day almost to complete an assessment when it's all said and done sometimes, and that's a long time.
Jason Gonzalez
Especially if you have 50 kids, yeah, whatever. I mean, on average. And I think when I did the polls, it was like about two to two and a half hours it takes an average OT and that's not even based on experience. I A lot of people, even who had 20 years more they take, still take four hours of rain evaluation. So it's just on average, regardless of experience, it takes us about two two and a half hours to write a report. So those people can write in under an hour. That's great. But the Yeah, the whole like process of evaluating, it just takes a long time, and then, you know, you miss kids and have to end up writing it at home because, yeah.
Jayson Davies
All right, so now we're going to talk about some ways that you can try and shorten that amount of time.
Jason Gonzalez
Um, no, I don't think so. Um, I mean, I guess, well, I guess, on average, how many emails do you do? I do about 30 eval? 3035?
Jayson Davies
I think I have 19 tries alone at the high school. I have another I think I have like six or so at the elementary school. So that's 25 already. And that doesn't include the, you know, I already have five initials waiting on my desk. So I'm at 30 right there.
Jason Gonzalez
Yeah, so and imagine that's, you know, whole 30 days of your OT. But, yeah, what was the next topic we were going to talk about? Well, how to speed them up, use double time docs.
Jayson Davies
Docs. So we're gonna go over that through some strategies. And double time Docs is not our only strategy, but it is one of the strategies. And I don't know, do you have any data on how long it takes double time to do a report on double time docs?
Jason Gonzalez
You know, it's for the use of double time docs. I think we haven't taken any data, and it varies depending on the kid. So I've actually for if I don't need to do an assessment, if I'm just discharging a kid, and, you know, I can just, he's independent on a lot of things, or almost everything. I literally can write a report in eight minutes. But it's, it's, I mean, it's just because everything's click, click, you know, click, button. And I guess we can talk about double time docs and, um. Well, I guess we mentioned a bunch of times, but if you want to go into the strategies of so I'm not jumping around on like my evaluation process, which I still do evaluations at home, because, you know, I do have a high caseload also, and I, you know, can't help it, but what I do is, what the benefit of using the double time.is that it comes with a questionnaire, or whatever. It's all question based. It's kind of like, kind of like the school functional assessment and like OT, easy OT, where you just, you know, look at different areas and you click things. But while you're doing that or taking notes and you're observing, I literally have my the phone open, and I when I consult with parents, I tell them I'm taking notes on my phone so it doesn't look like I'm being rude, and I ask them straight questions, straight through my template, and as I answer it, it's right, automatically running my report. So the only thing I have to do is go home and do the interpretation of the test results. I do is I base all my testing regardless of what age kid I have, and I do the same activity, and that's where it comes to that stone Institute of Health, where I learned it's a fish, and it has three directions, and it says, Pick three colors, color fish, cut fish out, and then I added, you know, right, you know, three sentences about the fish, or right in the alphabet, depending on what the age of the child is. And so what you can look at that is, I can have my DTD app open, and as he's doing, looking at that, I can see attention. I can see sitting posture. I can see, you know, how many verbal cues can he read? Can he follow verbal directions? Can he stay organized? Was his task? Initiation, sequencing, oh, and then like and I can see hand positioning for scissor skills. I can see, can you color within the lines? I can see, can he write the alphabet? Can you write a sentence? Can he generate his own sentences? And I get, you know, so much information from that. And then I also do have that app open when I look at when I consult with a teacher, because I always, do, always have to consult the teacher. They usually have the issue or the referral reason, and so when I consult with them, I go through every single question on there, and I really like, How is his ADLs? Can he bund his shirt at school? Can he do this? Can he manage his clothing? Does he wash his hands? And you can just click, literally those options, and it automatically writes your report so you don't have to organize, you don't have to worry about names. You don't have to worry about pronoun errors. It has all the recommend, has recommendations on there and has like 20 assessments on there, from what I got from Facebook, a poll of the most commonly used assessments. But so that is the how I feel like and you know, it's a learning curve too. It's, you know, you have to know where the questions are. It's kind of like typing, knowing where the keys are. Once you start, it kind of gets low, but once you get the hang of it, you just, you already know what questions to ask. You already know to observe in the classroom, sustained attention and stuff like that. And so that's how I found it to be so easy. And so when you know a kid and you're doing a three year, if you've known a kid for 12 years, you can just quickly answer those because you didn't already know his Yeah, and it's all function, yeah. So.
Jayson Davies
But you do have, I mean, in a way, double time docs, it's, it's a quote, unquote, fillable template. In a way, it is a template that you kind of go through, but it's great because it creates a narrative for you automatically, versus a regular template, you have to go back and put that narrative in, yeah. But as far as if you're not using double time docs, you know, some of the simple ways that I've done, or what I've done to make writing a report quicker, and sometimes it's only like mini school, like I have both a female report and a male report, or at least I did in the past. And so that way, if I was doing a mail I opened up the mail report all the he's were, he's rather in hims versus hers, and she's and so, and then other vice versa, I would open up the female report, and everything was already there. Yeah, it took a little bit of time upfront to do that, but to answer a few of the questions, yes, double time Docs is a there is a speed to it based upon, if you do a monthly plan or yearly plan, go to double time docs.com. And remind me again, you have a promo going on right now, don't you Jason?
Jason Gonzalez
Yeah, fall 18, and it's 20% off. So, yeah, 20% off. So you can check that out near on our website. Also cool,
Jayson Davies
also to speed up your evaluation. You know, just having some sort of template, definitely have a template you. Know, have all it's easier. It's quicker to delete stuff than it is to add stuff, obviously. So you know what? Have the template in there for every single standardized assessment that you're going to have, and then just quickly delete the ones that you're not going to going to use again. What's cool about double time docs, and I've gone through the trial and I've used it a little bit, is that it only puts on to your assessment, the stuff that you fill out. And so you don't have to go through and delete stuff because it never got added. You put in your bot scores on the template that's already really there for you, and then that's what shows up, and the other stuff doesn't. Is that, right Jason?
Jason Gonzalez
Yeah, yeah. And you know, if you don't answer questions, they don't show up either. So it's not like a blank spot, like, you know, we have vocational skills, and if, you know, driving car, doing laundry and all that stuff, obviously, like, if you have a, you know, five year old, you don't need to answer that. You don't have to say they don't if you don't answer, it doesn't show up at all. So if you only answer one question, you're gonna have like, one or two sentences on your report, so you don't have weird blank spots or anything like that, and there's comment boxes everywhere, so you can always add comments because, you know, obviously kids don't always act the same or do things the same way, but we have most of the you can pretty much write a fully functional report without adding Any comments. That's cool, just by clicking buttons. And I know somebody wrote easy ot on there, I actually, literally took as many questions from all the templates that I saw online, from reports, and even just compiling as many questions as I can so and yeah, like you said, those questionnaires where you just click things, or you still have to transfer that information into a narrative report, yeah, figure out the you know, how it flows, and stuff like that. And I think that usually kind of took me the longest time is like, am I using he too much? Am I is it sounding very redundant? Is it always he is able, he is able. He is able. We try to mix it up a little bit.
Jayson Davies
All right? Well, we're coming up here on the one hour mark. I want to ask, or I want to mention real quick, something you talked about, I think you said, app. Do you have an app yet, or is it just where you go online?
Jason Gonzalez
It's all online. We can go
Jayson Davies
online on your phone, right, and check the box, yeah, or on your iPad,
Jason Gonzalez
it saves every 30 seconds, I think. And you know, I obviously you have to have Wi Fi, because if you don't, and then it probably won't save, and then you'll just lose all that information. But yeah, I pretty much every school I've worked in has Wi Fi. So not every place I have has phone reception, but you know, it has printable questions and also has, like a principal, teacher questionnaire and parent and if I don't have time to consult with them, I just email them that and they fill it out and send it back. Covers pretty much whatever this very is generalized. It's just like ADLs make comments, you know what he's independent on? It's just a blank box, and they can just say, like, you know what he can do, or if he's independent, or he has told her trouble tying a shoe or something, but it just like what their perceptions are, yeah,
Jayson Davies
and so Christina says she used the trial, the seven day trial, and I did too. And I do agree with her. It does take, you know, the first time you go through it, just like anything that's new, it's gonna take you a minute to get through your first, your first eval or two. But I think once you start learning where stuff is really quickly, it's like learning a new IEP system. You know, everywhere you go, the IEP is still the same. It's just a different system. But with double time docs, you can quickly figure out, okay, boom, you just go down. I know I took my iPad into a classroom and was just, boom, boom, boom, clicking the stuff as I saw the kid mark them off the checklist. And so I do think, yeah, it can get quick. It does take a little while that first time, because, just like any new program, you got to learn the program. But I can see how it can be super quick. Well,
Jason Gonzalez
especially if you take four hours to write email, it still say, I mean, yeah, it still takes me 3040, minutes to write some emails. I mean, just the ones, you know, the kid. It can be really fast, but it's, it's not the benefit. Isn't only the you know, that it can, it can possibly save you lots of time. And then, you know, I understand that some people write their emails an hour. I don't think I can cut that back, yeah, but it's just the structure of it. And that's where we got a lot of the feedback. You know, I got a lot of feedback saying, like, hey, it didn't save me as much time. But, you know, I don't forget to look at things. I know I have everything there. Like, I don't be like, Oh, I've got to ask about whether or not he can, you know, tie a shoe, or what he does at recess, or something like those questions where you're like, Oh, I forgot who said that it's just right there. Like I used to, you know, sometimes I email three. In the day. And, I mean, like, oh man, did Charlie say he liked being this, or did, or was it, you know, Robert or something. So it's just more that organization and that convenience and the structure and and, you know, and the benefit, one of the reasons we developed it was having that consistency in the school district, or if I work for a contract company having a bunch of us being able to write similar reports. So those, you know, we represent the company we work for or the district we work for. So you want to give something that has, you know, good quality. And, you know, new grads. I was a new grad, and I was new to the setting, I didn't know what I was doing. And to me, that is one of the most beneficial parts of it, too. It's like you have so much to worry about when you start out in a new school or in a new job. Why this is one less thing you need to worry about? I mean, I have no idea what if I was put in a school right now, when I graduate, I would have no idea what I was supposed to look for. And if I looked at old evals, it would be very like, you know, the deficit base like that function. Because when I'm looking at evals three years ago, it's all like, yeah, they're like, very medically sounding that parent friendly as parent friendly as they should be. But the the D, our program, really makes it parent friendly is very function based. It's what they can do in the class, what they can do independently. And then you have comments. You can write whatever you want. I wanted to
Jayson Davies
ask you this one real quick. Brenda brought up an important one that I hadn't thought about, is confidentiality. How is your website confidential? It's secured.
Jason Gonzalez
And even like so we have a team function also where districts have been using and it's and there's on the free like Scott, if he's still there, I don't know if you can type in, but he does more of the confidential website stuff than we abide by certain regulations. But it's for like the team. We have a team function for like the school districts have been purchasing, and you have one lead therapist, and they could do they distribute how many docs everybody gets, whatever, but they never see the names of it. No, if you're, if you're on a team function, nobody sees other evals that everybody else is writing. So you have, you only see your own. And if you look in the corner of our website, it has a little lock, so it's secured. What's that I can't see the evals that I'm
Jayson Davies
writing? Right? No, no, I can't do that. Okay? I think that's what people want to make sure, you know, HIPAA and FERPA are very, are very tricky, and no one wants to break HIPAA or FERPA. So, all right, oh,
Jason Gonzalez
yeah. And then we're also coming out with a PT template, hopefully in the next couple weeks, and a speech template and a clinical version of, you know, for clinics, which takes out, like the school terminology. It looks more of the, you know, the range of motion stuff like that. Alrighty,
Jayson Davies
guys, we're gonna kind of finish up. So thank you, Jayson, so much for coming on. I appreciate it. We'll have to do another one of these sometime and keep
Jason Gonzalez
it. Yeah, I think we came up with a bunch of topics.
Jayson Davies
Have a good night, and we will see you all next time. Thanks for having me. Bye, Jason. Have a good one. Yeah, you too. Bye. All right. Well, there you have it. That was Jayson Gonzalez of double timed.com you can be sure to get all the information on double time docs, either at his website, double timed docs.com or you can use the show notes at ot schoolhouse.com episode or forward slash episode 14 to get a link to double time docs. If you do that, that kind of helps us out. We are an affiliate for double time docs, which just means that at no additional cost for you, we get compensated for letting you know about them and and pointing you in the right direction so that you can find materials that help you and your practice. So with that, we're going to sign off. I'm Jayson. I will see you next time on the OT school house podcast. Take care.
Amazing Narrator
Thank you for listening to the OT school house podcast for more ways to help you and your students succeed right now, head on over to otschoolhouse.com Until next time class is dismissed
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