9 informative CEU courses for pediatric occupational therapists

In any business, it is important to keep operations up to date and encourage employees to strengthen their skills. For pediatric occupational therapy practices, there are several steps that can be taken to ensure that a practice and its OT therapists are as current and effective as possible. One step is to use a high-performing EMR platform that will keep your practice’s notes, scheduling, and billing under control. 

Continuing education (CEU) courses are another fantastic way to keep your practice in good shape. By encouraging your pediatric OT clinicians to engage in CEU courses, you are helping to keep your practice refreshed and impactful. In fact, many states require pediatric OTs to participate in a certain number of CEU course hours every year. We’ve rounded up some of the pediatric OT CEU course options approved by the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) that you can recommend to your pediatric OT practitioners. 

OccupationalTherapy.com

OccupationalTherapy.com offers an extensive library of continuing education courses to which members are granted unlimited access. Membership requires a low, annual fee. Here are a few of the pediatric OT CEU courses offered by OccupationalTherapy.com

• Foundations for School Readiness: This is a 5-part text and video format CEU course with a total of 5 AOTA-approved CE credit hours. Topics include Sensory Regulation and Yoga and Executive Functioning in the Classroom. 
• Continued Conversations, The CE Podcast:These are short, audio format courses that each count as one AOTA-approved hour of CE credit. There are many pediatric OT CE topics covered in the podcast, including Evidence Based Interventions in Pediatric Occupational Therapy and Functional Goal Setting in Pediatrics. 
• Case Studies for the Master Clinician: These are in-depth, video format CEU courses that offer 1-3 AOTA-approved hours of CE credit. Topics include Brachial Plexus Birth Injury and The Osteoarthritic Thumb. 

Summit Professional Education

Summit Professional Education offers CEU course options with varied, in-depth topics related to pediatric occupational therapy available à la carte or for an annual membership price. Here are some of the pediatric OT CEU courses they offer:

• Essential Assessment and Treatment Strategies for Orthopedic Dysfunction: This is a 3-part series worth 6 AOTA-approved CE credit hours. The course also offers 1 and 2 hours options in lieu of the full program. 
• Evidence-Based Assessment and Treatment for Pediatric Neurodevelopmental Disabilities: This is an online video course worth 1-6 AOTA-approved CE credits, depending on how much of the program one chooses to purchase. Each CE hours is purchased separately, but they can be bundled together for a discount.
• Children with Severe Impairments: This is an online video course worth 6 AOTA-approved CE credit hours that covers effective assessment and treatment, strategies, and best practices for children with medically complex diagnoses. 

MedBridge

MedBridge has a wide range of online video and webinar CEU courses available for individual purchase or accessed through an annual subscription. They offer 236 courses related to pediatric OT, here are a few examples:

• Pain Management for Children: This video course discusses pain types and mechanisms to identify the symptoms. Therapists will learn to identify persistent pain through similar patterns of symptoms, behaviors, and cognitive changes which must be addressed for an effective treatment.
• Purposeful Play Solutions for Sensory Modulation in Early Intervention: This is a video course that teaches therapists to identify sensory modulation challenges in infants and toddlers by utilizing skilled clinical observation, parental input, and assessments.
• Assessment for Breathing: History, Observation, Musculoskeletal: This is a video course that will outline what is important in the patient  history when assessing breathing challenges in children and present a method for assessing the musculoskeletal system for structures related to breathing.