Just One Thing (JOT): custom care plans for people with cognitive challenges

IP Status: Copyrighted

Applications

• Clinical care program - cognitive challenges

Key Benefits & Differentiators

• Facilitates customized strategy development in a collaborative manner
• Enables progress tracking and specific care modifications
• Increase at-home therapy adherence

Customizable care program for people with cognitive challenges

People with cognitive challenges and their care partners (caregivers) are often overwhelmed when they receive complex instructions or overly general guidelines after clinical appointments. This frequently results in confusion, poor therapy adherence, and increased caregiver burden. Currently available products for caregivers include handouts, informational websites, and mobile apps. However, these resources only provide general advice and are often left unused or discarded. While structured training programs offer better training, they require long time commitments (several weeks to months outside of clinical visits), and are not customized to specific needs of the patients.

Researchers and clinicians at the University of Minnesota and Minneapolis VA Health Care System have created an easy-to-understand, actionable, and customizable care program for persons with cognitive challenges and their partners. Clinicians can use this program during clinical sessions to collaboratively develop a "Just One Thing" care plan, which would provide clients a strategy to focus on until the next visit. This plan also enables an easy method to track progress. Having an adaptable planning worksheet gives caregivers a simple and clear plan that is specific to the patient they are caring for. This in turn, helps reduce burden, increase at-home therapy adherence, and improves overall patient outcomes.

Phase of Development

Clinician guide and worksheet fully developed

Just One Thing package

• Clinician Guide
• Worksheet

Desired Partnerships

This custom care plan is now available for download. Please review the terms and conditions provided on the right panel of this page carefully, and complete the checkout process to download the package. Please contact our office to share your business’ needs and learn more.

Researchers

• John Ferguson, PhD Associate Professor, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Minnesota
• Adriana Hughes, PhD Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Minnesota; Minneapolis VA Health Care System
• Donald MacLennan, MA CCC Minneapolis VA Health Care System
• Logan Cates, MA CCC-SLP Minneapolis VA Health Care System
• Tonya Rich, PhD OTR/L Rehabilitation Science, University of Minnesota; Minneapolis VA Health Care System