Therapeutic Recreation
Healing Children Through Leisure and Recreational Activity
Therapeutic Recreation
At Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialists use a unique skill set designed to help children, teens, young adults and their families develop and use leisure in ways that enhance their health, functional abilities, independence and quality of life.
Therapeutic Recreation (TR) addresses the whole person with a focus on enhancing independent functioning within physical, social, cognitive and emotional areas. TR uses recreation and leisure activities to address the needs of individuals to promote psychological and physical health, recovery, and wellbeing.
We partner with many departments and programs to offer Therapeutic Recreation (TR) services to our patients across inpatient and outpatient levels of care.
Examples of patients we care for include those receiving services from the following programs:
Acute Care
- Burn Care
- Cardiology
- Colorectal
- Endocrinology
- Gastroenterology / Gastrointestinal
- Hematology, Oncology & Bone Marrow Transplant
Acute Care
- Infectious Disease
- Intensive Care
- Nephrology
- Neurology
- Pulmonary
- Surgery
Behavioral Health
- Crisis Care
- Inpatient Psychiatric Care
- Partial Hospitalization Services
Clinics
- Cardiopulmonary Clinic
- Endocrinology Clinic
- Hemodialysis Clinic
Chronic Pain Partial Hospitalization Program
Inpatient Rehabilitation
Outpatient Care
Our Services
Provider referrals are required to receive Therapeutic Recreation (TR) services.
TR team members may provide services to support patients in developing a wide range of skills to support their participation in recreation and leisure and enhance functioning across physical, social, cognitive and emotional areas. Examples of skills that TRs may support their patients in developing include the following:
- Adaptive recreation skills
- Adjustment to disability
- Cognitive skills training
- Community re-entry
- Community resource education
- Developmental leisure skills
- Exercise, physical activity, and fitness skills
- Healthy lifestyle and wellness skills
- Leisure exploration and participation
- Non-pharmacological pain management
- Social participation and communication
- Stress management and coping skills
TRs also provide a variety of specialized evaluation and intervention services, including the following:
- Adaptive bike evaluations
- Adaptive gaming evaluations
- Animal-assisted therapy
- Diabetes exercise and healthy lifestyle education
Meet Our Leadership
Megan E. McKim
Megan McKim, MOT, OTR/L, is the Program Manager for Clinical Therapies Behavioral Health & Therapeutic Recreation at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
Therapeutic Recreation Conference
Save the date for the 2027 Therapeutic Recreation Conference on Monday, March 8. Please make plans to join us virtually. This conference is designed for current, future, and retired professionals in therapeutic recreation, as well as members of other related professions. Students are also welcome to register for this event.
