[Solved]: You are working with a post-stroke patient that…

You are working with a post-stroke patient that lost 70% of their arm function. They are re-learning how to use a fork. When doing that, they need to: grab some rice from the plate with the fork; make the fork steadily travel from the plate to the mouth; pull the fork from the mouth. Your preceptor passes by you and observes your patient perform. Later, she comments with you: “it seems like you’ve used part-practice for too long”. She doesn’t provide further details. From her comment and the effects and characteristics of whole/part practice, you can reasonably assume: You are a terrible OT, because you used part practice in a skill that cannot be completed well without the interaction between components being exhaustively practiced. She thinks the patient doesn’t look too fluid in the transition between components and he looks ready to move on to whole practice. She thinks the patient is struggling with one of these actions, indicating he is overwhelmed, which can be easily fixed with whole practice. You made a mistake and whole practice should have been used since the beginning, because the skill has low complexity and very high organization. Part practice should not have been used in this skill because it is a very easy one that would never overwhelm the attention and memory capacity of this patient.