Hi. I'm Dr. Susan Fisher. My behavioral optometry practice is on Long Island, New York for the past 26 years. One year ago I opened up a new facility at 1600 Stewart Avenue in Westbury, New York. I graduated from the SUNY College of Optometry in New York City in 1982. I began my practice in 1988 and have been providing vision therapy to children and adults with a variety of binocular and perceptual challenges since that time. I have been on the medical staff at United Cerebral Palsy in Roosevelt, New York for the past 16 years and have come across many interesting cases. My duties as President-elect of the New York State Optometric Association put me in touch with professionals in the field throughout the state as well as giving me an opportunity to connect to many throughout the country. I was past president of the Nassau County Optometric Society and am an associate member of the College of Optometrists in Vision Development and the Optometric Extension Program. I will be discussing some interesting cases and therapies used and offering insights to the issues that come up in the field in our blog.
If you have any cases, anecdotes, information or insights you would like to share with other therapists, please feel free to email me and I would be happy to look them over and share them here. Sometimes I will be addressing parents and issues they might have, and other times I will be talking to students and professionals in the field.
Dr. Susan Fisher helps kids develop and improve visual discrimination, memory and 18 other cognitive skills with Module Two
What is my involvement with PuzzleArt Therapy? PuzzleArtist Alli Berman and I collaborated on and created an exciting new way of doing therapy. She created her PuzzleArt concept decades ago. I observed a creativity and brain fitness program she was presenting to help kids improve memory and think outside the box. She was using her wonderfully creative and educationally based PuzzleArt concepts. I saw the parallels and there was no turning back. We developed the System and launched it after two years of testing in the field. The PuzzleArt Therapy System…the colorful and fun approach… was born! We are grateful and thrilled that therapists in 15 countries and optometry schools in the US use our System. I will be discussing some of my cases, observations and suggestions with PuzzleArt as well as the traditional therapy standards in the industry.
June 12, 2011 @ 3:53 pm
Dr Susan Fisher ;
The NYS Long Island District Occupational Therapy Association hosts monthly meetings. We are interested in having you present at our fall meeting which is currently being planned. I can be reached at 477-5564. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Vera Gallagher
Continuing Education Chairperson
NYSOTA LID
October 10, 2014 @ 2:29 pm
Dear Dr. Fisher,
I am a student of OT at SUNY Downstate and in reading your introduction here, it occurred to me that you may be interested in some research I recently heard about in a guest lecture. If you are not already familiar with it, here is a link to an article that presents a very interesting collaboration between an occupational therapist/researcher in Israel, Naomi Ferziger, and an opthamologist who together develop a comprehensive assessment of visual function in children with Cerebral Palsy and Cerebral Visual Impairment, which is particularly helpful for those patients who are difficult to assess due to severe, motor, cognitive, and communication limitations. I believe she will be publishing an even more recent article soon, but here is a link to her most recent published article of which I am aware. At this link (or even by googling her name, Naomi Ferziger, and “visual assessment in children with cerebral palsy”, you should be able to get access to the full text of the article.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8749.2010.03905.x/full
Puzzle Art sounds wonderful! One of my student colleagues shared a presentation about it with our class last year after attending a training. This is one tool that immediately came to mind for one of the nonverbal and art-loving, sensory-seeking clients I met through a volunteer position. I am excited about the possibilities of exploring it with her!
Cheers,
Danielle Blair
OT graduate student
SUNY Downstate Medical Center