Professional Practice in Assistive Techology

Larry F. CobbOctober 22, 2014

What will be Defined

The person that provides assistive technology and his/her professional issues

Ethics of Practice Quality Assurance Liability

Assistive Technology Practitioner

A specialist in assistive technology application; typically has professional background in engineering, occupational therapy, physical therapy, recreation therapy, special education, speech-language pathology, or vocational rehabilitation counseling

Assistive Technology Practitioner

Each practitioner brings something important to the table.

They must be well grounded in their disciplines and have knowledge and skill in assistive technology and the industry in general.

Ethics and Standards of Practice

Ethics is defined as “the study of conduct and moral judgement….and the system or code of morals of a particular profession.

Each ATP must comply with the code of ethics of their discipline

A professional association typically develops the code.

Code of Ethics for Assistive Technology: The RESNA

Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA)

Interdisciplinary association of people with common interest in technology and disability

Purposed with improving the potential of people with disabilities by promoting research, development, education, advocacy, and the provision of technology and the people engaged in these activities.

Standards of Practice

Standards are often based pertaining to each specialty is important since most practitioners are from different disciplines.

The standards are generally based of certifications

Quality Assurance

A broad area of fundamental importance to the safe and effective application of assistive technologies

Two Basic Consideration The quality of services rendered The quality of devices supplied

Overview of Quality of Assurance – Patterson’s Take

Three views of what constitutes quality The consumer – judges the quality on

how daily activity is improved in specific areas of application

The practitioner – generates measures of performance and attempts to judge quality of services and devices against these measures

The purchaser – Are the services or devices cost effective?

Standards for Service Providers Professional certification is way that

professional organizations use to measure and report an individual practitioners degree of competency.

A body of knowledge must be agreed upon unique to practitioners in an area of certification.

A set of professional competences must be set and a way of evaluating an individuals knowledge of must be developed and implemented.

Standard for Devices

Several types of standards that can be developed Relations by federal legislations as with

manufacture and production of assistive technology

The FDA has is way of classifying medical devices

Devices can be rated by development of compatibility and performance standards

Outcomes of Assistive Technology Delivery

The selection of device is based on what a person is able to do now, not what he or she will be able to do.

To evaluate effectiveness, you have to look at the entire process and not just the service or device.

The determination of success is based on measurements of outcomes related to the success the consumer achieves using the assistive technology system.