Assignment: Cardiovascular System.
Assignment: Cardiovascular System.
We are not a medical model profession but we do have a medical base. The scientific inquiry in med- icine as a science has had a major impact on our profession. Rather than take an active role in the scientific inquiry, we have relied on the work of others to provide direction to our principles. Thus by not directly address- ing the concepts of activity and its impact on the nervous systems, behavior, or the cardiovascular system, we have not based our principles on the scientific movement. We must do more than speak about our theories. We must develop a rage for knowledge and document our prin-
ciples as a scientific discipline. In 1969, the President of AOTA (Ruth Brunyate Wiemer) challenged the profession to address questions that
would document the relationship between • Deprivation or affluence of play and teenage aggression • Deprivation of work or enforced retirement and the onset of illness after age 65 • The lack of work and recreation and the apathy of the slow learner • The inescapable uselessness of the terminally ill and longevity (7). Do we wish to continue to talk about the effect of activity or do we wish to do something about it? Now 11 years later, if we want to make a mark in both the humanistic and scientific movements, we must address questions like these and support the people who ask them. As a profession we are not to date unlike the Bakhtiari Tribe of Persia. This is a nomadic tribe of goat herders
who daily move their entire tribe to new grazing land. They have taught us that a group cannot refine a culture on the move. The Bakhtiari life has changed very little since 10,000 B.C. They have only the simple technology that can be carried on daily journeys. The simplicity is not romantic, it is a matter of survival (8). In applying this analogy to Occupational Therapy, I have to ask the question, when are we going to stop following the grazing trail and develop the technology to plant our own fields? As a profession we have seen our nearly singular roles in vocational rehabilitation, basic living skills, and use of
activity come and go. Other professions have implemented what initially were our roles, but we have survived! This means that the health care system is looking to us for a special emphasis on health care delivery. We must internal- ize this positive concept of us. I think we can develop a fertile strain that will allow our fields to be very fruitful. We have something very unique to harvest. We must master our own product, understand it, and use that understand- ing to mold the living environment.
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
