Meta OT is having a makeover. You are welcome to join the party. What is Meta OT? Well it consists of some useful tools hopefully useful tools and snippets from the world of OT. Interesting things and perhaps not so interesting things as well as a collection of things to make the average OT's life a bit nicer & easier. Making the web more OT web friendly one site at a time :)

OK I'm back. After a massive lack of time to commit to meta-ot my day job is settling back down again and I am attempting to get back in the swing of all things interweb. First things first though and some site maintenance - the traffic on this site is Huuuge! As a result I'm trimming all the front page stories back to a preview posting. I haven't done anything to the full content of posts just made it so the front page shows the first 100-200 words. To see the full posting simply click on the heading. To demonstrate see my beautifully created image. More soon!

So you want to get involved and help out updating some of the content? Find below a hopefully detailed account of how you go about doing everything from editing information to logging in. Overall:

1. Creating an account / Logging in
2. Creating Content
1. Summary
2. Creating a Blog
3. Creating a Assessment / Outcome measure
4. Creating a OT course entry
3. Editing Content

Please note that some of the site is subject to change a little over time - particularly if you let me know something isnt working!

1. Creating an account / Logging in
As of 29 April '07 You can now login with your yahoo ID. Simply follow the links on the login page or login right now by clicking on me. Just note that you will have a really long and unreadable username! Please edit it once logged in (See point 3 below).

1. Register for an account: http://metaot.com/user/register
   Once you fill in the details your password will be sent to your email address entered. Feel free to change it however! So.. 
2. Login by going to the not-so-secret page http://metaot.com/user  and enter your details. As stated in the email. 
3. Once logged in you will be taken to your summary page. Here it lists what your recent activity on the site has been. You can also edit your preferences and personal details. Lets take a look at some of them. Simply click on "Edit" Next to your username (see diagram) and there you can change your password and time zone (your posts will be corrected to the correct timezone if you set this). You can also set whether you have a contact form on the site so people can contact you.

2. Creating content

1.  So once you are logged in you have the ability to create some content. Please note that all content will be tagged with your name as the author and unless you have been given "Editor" rights then you won't be able to edit something that isnt yours.
2. On the left hand side is a link to "Create content". Click on that (or go to http://metaot.com/node/add )
3. As a normal authenticated user  you have a few options (click on the link if there is one for more details):
1. Blog entry. You are welcome to use the engine to create your own blog
2. OT assessments.Add a new Assessment or Outcome measure to the database
3. OT course. Add a course entry from around the world
4. Note that you are given the option to preview your entry before posting. I strongly recommend  doing it!

3. Editing content 

Editing is fairly straightforward. The hardest point is finding the content to edit! A few tips:

1. Login
2. Find your item to edit and go to the page. So if you are trying to edit an assessment locate it in the list and go to the full entry. On the right hand side near the title of the item (see image) you should see an Edit button (NB: If you don't please contact me)
3. Clicking on the Edit link should allow you to edit the content as though you were creating it from scratch.
4. Note that each content type change is kept as a revision.

 And thats it! Have a play! Now go on and read about the various types of data to Create/Edit:

1. Blog entry.
2. OT assessments.
3. OT course.

 OT Assessments & Outcome measures 

So basically the most recent addition to meta-ot and perhaps the biggest challenge to keep it working is the Assessment & Outcome measures database.  Assessments & Outcome measures are inherently varied and complex; they differ wildly in what they are intended for and how they have been designed. As a result collecting information about them and presenting them isnt all that easy but I hope to have made it as straightforward a process as possible! Lets look at the steps overall and then one-by-one:

1. Get your information.
2. Calcuate the date range in months
3. Enter your data into meta-ot.
4. Add your references via citeulike or bibsonomy

1. Get your information

Ok so you need to gather your information for the assessment/outcome measure. What exactly do you need to enter? Well the answer is really "anything and everything!" . We have allowed a certain amount of flexibility within some of the fields to allow you to put links and HTML text in to allow you to write quite a bit if you so wish. But try and be succinct if you can! We have some fields to help you:

•  Title. A nice title for the measure. Ideally the most commonly used/standard one. If the measure has an abbreviation also put this in the title in brackets at the end
• AxLocales: Assessment Locales. These are Locales or areas that the assessment either has been designed to be carried out in or is commonly used in. Community, Outpatients, Inpatients, School, Community and Research are the current areas. You can add to this list be entering your own one but otherwise keep to the list if you can. To enter multiple entries seperate them with a comma
• AxKeywords: A list of keywords that would identify the assessment. For example say the assessment investigates. To get an idea of what type of words to enter look at the main list and the keywords column. Again, remember that to enter multiple keywords seperate them with a comma
• Author(s). Should keep a similar format: Surname, Inital. & Surname, Inital. (e.g. Goltsman, S., Gilbert. T.. & Wohlford, S.)
• Summary: Keep it short. Should be a kind of abstract for your Assessment!
• Publisher: Place here some publisher details. E.g. Harcourt details and a web address. Note that you can place simple HTML here if you wish
• Description: Your place where you can enter all the details you can about the assessment. Please try and be objective and keep to the facts! Remember the point of this database is to help others identify whether an assessment is useful for them and whether it will fulfill their needs. Again, you may enter simple html here if it helps.
• Age: Shall talk about this in point 2. At this stage try and gather information about the age-range the Assessment has been designed for
• More information URL: A web link to the downloadable assessment perhaps or the homepage of the author? Not neccessary but if you find something like that then this is where it goes
• Modified year: The year that the assesment was last updated or modified.

2. Calculate your date range

One of the trickiest things to develop for this kind of thing is how to display age-range requirements for an assessment. For example, many paediatric assessments are designed for children of months old or even weeks, some are non-specific and some  are only for a specific age category (e.g. Older Adults).  The answer (and arguably not the best one) is to enter the lower & higher age band as the age in Months. 

Lets imagine the Assessment was for 6-12months:
Age-Lower: 6
Age-Higher: 12
Lets look at that closer: The lower age bracket is 6 months old. So we simply place 6 in the Age-Lower box and 12 in the Upper box.
Easy eh? Ok lets try something a bit trickier.
Lets imagine the Assessment is for 6 yrs - 18 yrs:
Age-Lower: 72
Age-Higher: 216
So thats 6 times 12 (12 months in a year) which gives us the lower value: 72
And 18 times 12 which gives us the upper value: 216

So the rule of thumb is: Convert to months! If its in years then times 12!

What about those pesky assessments that simply state "Adults" or "Children". There are less and less about but here is how to deal with it:

Adults:
Age-Lower:192
Age-Higher:1200

All-Ages:
Age-Lower:0
Age-Higher:1200

Infants:
Age-Lower:0
Age-Higher:191

Adolescence:
Age-Lower:156
Age-Higher:240

3. Enter your data into meta-ot.

So follow the instructions as above to enter a new Assessment - its fairly easy! The hard bit has been done above!

4. Enter your references 

This could have been tackled a number of ways but for now I figured the best approach is to use services that already deal with citation management. Why? Well I don't like to reinvent the wheel and its also better for OT in the long run (references will be posted in effect onto two sites - double advertising for the authors of the original piece of literature!). The two options to use are  <!--
D(["mb","http://citeulike.org\u003c/a\> or\u003cbr /\>\u003ca onclick\u003d\"return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)\" href\u003d\"http://www.bibsonomy.org/\" target\u003d_blank\>http://www.bibsonomy.org/\u003c/a\> so you will need to make yourself an account\u003cbr /\>on one of those two and add the references via there. For each one\u003cbr /\>just tag with the little reference as noted on each assessment page.\u003cbr /\>E.g. \u003ca onclick\u003d\"return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)\" href\u003d\"http://metaot.com/ax/988\" target\u003d_blank\>http://metaot.com/ax/988\u003c/a\>  you will see at the bottom: "To add to\u003cbr /\>this list simply tag articles via citeUlike with the tag "metax-988"\u003cbr /\>"so you need to tag the item in \u003ca onclick\u003d\"return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)\" href\u003d\"http://bibsonomy.org\" target\u003d_blank\>bibsonomy.org\u003c/a\> or citeulike with that\u003cbr /\>tag. And then by magic it appears! (well should.. it may take a small\u003cbr /\>while for it to appear.. )\u003cbr /\>\u003cbr /\>Good luck with the rest of your studies!\u003cbr /\>\u003cbr /\>All the best\u003cbr /\>\u003c/div\>",1]
);
D(["mb","\u003cdiv style\u003d\"direction:ltr\"\>\u003cspan class\u003dsg\>\u003cbr /\>Will\u003cbr /\>\u003c/span\>\u003c/div\>",1]
);
//-->http://citeulike.org or http://www.bibsonomy.org/ . I won't bore you with the details of how they work but the basic idea is :

1. Create an account
2. Add the "Post bookmark" link to your toolbar in the web browser (see http://www.bibsonomy.org/post_bookmark or http://www.citeulike.org/post )
3. Browse Pubmed or similar for the references
4. Hit your "Post bookmark" button in your web browser and add some information to your now tagged reference
5. Hey presto! No need to write down some long winded reference - all your references are now in one place! Heck, you can even share them

So back to the assessments database. You have just entered all your information and you want to associate some references to it. Well simple just tag your articles in one of the two online managers with "metax-xxxx" where xxxx is the number noted on the page. Look towards the bottom of the now published assessment entry and you will see a line stating:

"Please note that you can add to this list of references. To add to this list
simply tag articles via citeUlike with the
tag "metax-987"

 So reference it with that tag (and any others you wish), give it 5 minutes and hit refresh. Hey presto it should magically appear! If it doesn't then drop me a line. 

The assessment & outcome measure database is now live!
Click here for the big hairy list! Assessment & Outcome measure database

It is by no means finished however!

As the image to the left states "We need your help!" 

If you fancy getting your feet wet and helping out then take a read of this or alternatively mail me directly 

Find below a (handy?) glossary of commonly used terms within medical notes and the like. Please remember that each medical institution usually has its own style of notes. Be careful when using these and try and hunt down the local Abbreviation list. For more information on SOAP notes see this article. If you have an iPod you may be interested to know that the list has been converted to a Notes Application - read more about it here.

Well the site has been a little bit quiet for some time. Many excuses - mainly that I have got a new job and secondly because what I have been doing has been behind the scenes. Well, like Apple, Inc I figured that instead of unleashing a half-made half-useful product I would give you all a sneak preview of whats being going on prior to its release. Its not ready at the moment, mainly because I'm not comfortable with the design and usability aspects but we are nearly there..

In short what I have been working on, is a whopping great big OT Assessment and Outcome Measure database. All searchable and in a nice sortable list much like the OT Courses list. It already has some rather natty features like rss feeds for research articles relating to each and every assessment which can be added to by you, the public! These references are also exportable at a click to BibTeX which can then be used in EndNote and the like. As well as this every item will be comment-able and (I hope) editable by yourselves. The inital list has been compiled with the kind help of Cheryl Boop (Assessment list in Willard & Spackman fame) but I hope to have a list that will be far more current and useful.

Not entirely sure when it will be live - its taking some time to do quite a lot of data entering. If you wish to speed up the process then drop me a line. Would love the help! For now take a look at some of the screengrabs below. Click for a bigger view.