Gifty Abraham, O.T.D., OTR/L

Dr. Abraham graduated with a Master of Science degree in occupational therapy and a Doctor of Occupational Therapy degree at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Abraham's doctoral work focused on increasing awareness and confidence among practitioners to use occupation-centered model and assessments that systematically look at a child's volition. The long term vision of her doctoral project was to increase the active engagement of children with disabilities in more meaningful occupations of choice, and in turn, increase participation and outcomes in occupations of development, learning and play. Dr. Abraham's experience working with the pediatric population includes evaluating and treating children with a variety of conditions. She has conducted in-services that teach practitioners about the importance of evaluating and utilizing their client's volitional information in outpatient settings. In an effort to serve the community, she continues to practice as a clinician in an outpatient setting. She currently teaches pediatric courses, and mentors student research groups at Midwestern University. She hopes to support and mentor future practitioners who will make an impact on the lives of many individuals and families.

Dr. Abraham has conducted research to understand medical staff perspectives on caring for children with autism in the hospital setting. Her current research focuses on increasing nursing staff self-efficacy when working with children with disability. Following is an abstract from one of the studies that was published in 2021.

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to describe nursing staff perspectives about caring for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in the hospital, strategies they use to support care, and relationships between these factors.

Design and Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional survey design with nursing staff at a large pediatric hospital system in the United States was employed. The researcher-designed, pilot-tested survey assessed participant demographics, knowledge about ASD, perceived effectiveness caring for children with ASD, previous training, and current strategy use. Data analysis involved descriptive statistics, correlations, and group comparisons based on interaction frequency with the population and previous training.

Results: The participants involved 90 pediatric hospital nursing staff members providing direct care. Respondents demonstrated 90% accurate knowledge of the characteristics of ASD. Self-reported effectiveness in caring for children with ASD did not correlate with knowledge and significantly correlated with an increased number of strategies. Nursing staff with frequent interaction with people with ASD or those with previous training reported significantly more strategies to care for children with ASD. Only 35% of participants reported that they have adequate strategies to care for children with ASD in the hospital.

Practice Implications: Having more strategies was the factor associated with higher self-efficacy, so training for nursing staff should focus on increasing the number of strategies to use with children with ASD in the hospital and provide mechanisms to collaborate with other professionals to individualize strategies to meet each child's needs.