Mending the Mind: Exploring the Role of Occupational Therapy for Executive Dysfunction Post-Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury

Executive dysfunction is a common concern for children after experiencing a traumatic brain injury. This can greatly affect occupational performance. Occupational therapists can provide therapeutic services to improve executive function skills, utilize compensatory strategies to restore function over time, and educate parents and caregivers on the expected symptoms and impairments. During this capstone project, I focused on learning how to address executive dysfunction in the pediatric post TBI population and created deliverables to assist future therapists with the same task. Seven children who experienced executive dysfunction post- traumatic brain injury between the ages of two and eighteen were selected as participants. Data was collected throughout the experience via literature review, observation, chart review, interview, survey, and implementation of the treatment protocol. Overall, we found the applied interventions and theories to be effective in the short term and promising for continued growth with long term use