Based on a review of the evidence, members of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine Stroke Group's Movement Interventions Task Force offer these five recommendations to help improve transitions of care for patients and their caregivers: (1) improving communication processes, (2) utilizing transition specialists, (3) implementing a patient-centered discharge checklist, (4) utilizing standardized outcome measures, and (5) establishing partnerships with community wellness programs. Due to changes in healthcare policy, there are incentives to improve transitions during stroke rehabilitation. Although transition management programs often include multidisciplinary teams, medication management, caregiver education, and follow-up care management, there is a lack of a comprehensive and standardized approach to implement transition management protocols during post-stroke rehabilitation. This article uses the Transitions of Care (TOC) model to conceptualize how to facilitate a comprehensive patient-centered hand-off at discharge to maximize patient functioning and health. Specifically, this article reviews current guidelines and provides an evidence summary of several commonly cited approaches (early supported discharge, planned pre-discharge home visits, discharge checklists) to manage TOC, followed by a description of documented barriers to effective transitions. Patient-centered and standardized transition management may improve community integration, activities of daily living performance, and quality of life for stroke survivors while also decreasing hospital readmission rates during the transition from hospital to home to community.

Occupational therapy practitioners may encounter challenges when they try to incorporate evidence into practice. To embrace evidence-based practice (EBP), clinicians must have readily available, relevant, and concisely summarized evidence. Although researchers have described the importance and process of EBP, less has been written about how to efficiently integrate evidence into practice. Clinicians may benefit from examples of reasoning, strategies, and resources to successfully integrate evidence. This article reviews the steps of EBP and offers recommendations to overcome common barriers. For EBP to become integrated into practice, greater communication and collaboration among all stakeholders must occur. EBP and knowledge translation require multiple processes and coordinated efforts. Therefore, everyone from practitioners to employers has a role in increasing EBP and transferring knowledge for practice. To encourage discussion and actions, the article provides implications and recommendations for practitioners, researchers, educators, organizations, and policymakers.

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Longer lengths of institutionalization are associated with more atypical sensory discrimination, praxis, and sensory modulation scores in children adopted from Eastern European orphanages. The areas of sensory integration that appear to be more vulnerable to deprived conditions in early childhood are vestibular-proprioceptive, tactile, visual, auditory, and praxis. Adopted children with lengthy periods of institutionalization may benefit from occupational therapy for early sensory integrative and developmental screenings.