INTRODUCTION: The OTPN at Massachusetts General Hospital works to reduce barriers to care and implement tailored accommodations to improve patients with ASD/IDD access to and participation in healthcare. A quality improvement project was conducted to understand the OTPN interventions perceived as valuable by the recipients of care. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE AND EVIDENCE: Patients with ASD/IDD experience unmet healthcare needs and low patient satisfaction when accessing healthcare. Wagner’s Chronic Care Model was used as a framework to understand the factors that contribute to this problem. Current literature provides evidence-based strategies to improve the quality of care for patients with ASD when accessing healthcare services, but lacks descriptive evidence from the patient and caregiver perspective. DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three clients of the OTPN (one former patient with ASD and two parents of former patients). Using the phenomenological method, data was collected and analyzed to develop themes identified among participants. A follow-up interview with the OTPN obtained the OT perspective that informed the interventions valued by project participants. RESULTS: Participants identified barriers to care prior to collaborating with the OTPN, as well as valued OTPN interventions that involved patient-centered anticipatory planning, advocacy, and coordination of care. The OTPN used her OT perspective to understand the intersection of the person, environment and occupation to inform interventions that improved the patient experience. CONCLUSION: Customized interventions provided by the OTPN were highly valued by previous clients and were perceived to improve their healthcare experience by addressing unique patient needs and preferences.

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A survey was sent to classroom teachers in Central Florida educating students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to investigate: 1) intervention practices currently used in the classroom for students with ASD; 2) if the interventions being used are evidence-based, and; 3) if there a difference in use of evidence-based interventions between teachers with the Florida Autism Endorsement and teachers without the Endorsement. A nonprobability purposive study was conducted via an email-based survey. The survey was designed using the tailored design method and was created in Qualtrics.com, an online survey software program. The survey was divided into three major sections: an intervention section which included a variety of evidence and non-evidenced-based practices drawn from the current research literature; a section focused on how teachers select the interventions they use in their classrooms; and, a demographic section. The survey was sent via email to classroom teachers registered with University of Central Florida Center for Autism and Related Disabilities. Participant inclusion criteria included: 1) currently a classroom teacher in a Central Florida, and 2) at least one student with ASD in the classroom. Forty surveys were completed for a ten percent response rate. Results indicated that a variety of evidence- based and non-evidence-based interventions were being used in classrooms. The top three reported interventions were Visual Supports (95 %), Computer Program Applications (93%), and Social Stories (73 %). Based on current empirical evidence, these top three interventions have insufficient evidence regarding their efficacy for use with students with ASD. In addition, two of the interventions reported to be used have a negative evidence base suggesting they may be harmful for some students with ASD. There were no significant differences between teachers with the Florida ASD Endorsement and teachers without

Presently, the DSM is undergoing revision in anticipation of the publication of the DSM-5 in 2013 (APA, 2010a). The Neurodevelopmental Disorders DSM-5 workgroup has suggested that Asperger’s Disorder (AS) and Autistic Disorder (AD) be subsumed into a new, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnosis (APA, 2010b). This project reviews researcher methodologies for the description, study inclusion/exclusion, and assessment of individuals with AS and AD in 100 highly cited articles from high-impact journals. Results demonstrate that researchers’ methodologies are highly variable. Additionally, all researchers do not use the “gold standard” combination of the ADOS and the ADI-R for assessing AS and AD. The use of inconsistent and potentially inappropriate methodologies in the literature suggests it may be preemptive to base the proposed DSM-5 revision on the incomparable results in the research.

Research has indicated that individuals with ASD have deficits in the ability to correctly identify and interpret the emotions and feelings of others. The ability to recognize the emotions of others has shown to be extremely beneficial in a number of ways. On the other hand, the inability to recognize the emotions of others has been linked to a number of negative outcomes, including inappropriate behaviors, as well as mental health, personal, social, and academic difficulties. The purpose of the current study was to extend the previous literature on effective strategies for teaching individuals with ASD to correctly label the situation-based emotions of others. Overall, the current study’s results suggest that an intervention package combining animated videos with prompt delay, error correction, and reinforcement procedures was effective in teaching participants the ability to label situation-specific emotions. Additionally, the current study’s results also supported the idea that individuals with ASD have stronger deficits in recognizing negative emotions, such as sad, mad, and afraid, as compared to positive emotions, such as happy. Future research should continue to focus on exploring the generalization and maintenance of these results.

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