A Guide To Understanding Texas Occupational Therapy CEs

IMPORTANT: This article contains outdated information. For updated information regarding your Texas Occuapational Therapy Renewal Rules, please visit this page.

Navigating the ever-shifting rules of occupational therapy continuing education requirements can be downright headache inducing at times. Required hours, approved providers (like us!), home study limitations, course types and topics…Blech. We know you’re busy with not a lot of time to dig through websites and regulations to find the information you need, so we try to make it easier by boiling down some of the more persnickity state requirements into something easier to digest.

Today we’re going to chart the way through occupational therapy continuing education for therapists in our own back yard: The great state of Texas!

Hours Required and Approved Providers

Ok, lets get the easy stuff out of the way: OTs and OTAs in Texas need to complete 30 hours of Continuing Education every 2 years. The deadline falls on the last day of your birth month every other year. Easy enough to remember. The Texas Board of Occupational Therapy Examiners has deemed that “Type 1 and Type 2 educational activities approved or offered by the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) or the Texas Occupational Therapy Association are pre-approved by the board”. There are no home study limits set by the state but each course must have a post-test and a certificate of completion. Since we’re an AOTA approved provider and all our courses provide a post-test certificate, you can complete your entire 30 hours online with HomeCEUConnection.com. Yay!

Type 1 VS Type 2 Courses

So what type of courses do you need? Well, the maximum number of Type 1 hours you can take is 15. The remainder must be Type 2. You’re also free to make all of your hours Type 2. This is where things get a little tricky. While the Texas Occupational Therapy board has stated that certain types of continuing education courses fall under Type 1 or Type 2 category, they don’t actually say “Yes, that course is approved”. They do, however, have a handy Decision Tree that you can use to determine what type of course is approved for which category. Here are a few sample topics for each type:

Sample Type 1 Topics – Maximum 15 hours Topics are relevant or related to OT, but general enough that other professionals might also benefit	Sample Type 2 Topics – Minimum 15 hours Topics are specific to the practice of occupational therapy with patients or clients.
Seminar on Alzheimer’s	Feeding for Patients with Dysphagia
Functional Independence Measures Training	Management of the Shoulder
Presentation on Medicare/Medicaid Changes	Physical Agent Modalities for Hand Patients
CPT Coding	Neurodevelopmental Treatment Techniques

Courses that don’t fall into Type 1 or Type 2 are ones like social work courses, grant writing workshops, weight management, and nutrition or repetitive facility-based courses (CPR, HIPAA & FERPA, patient privacy etc) and therefore do not count towards your 30 hours. So there you have it, your OT continuing education rules in kind of a nutshell. We have a course catalog filled with hours of great Type 1 and Type 2 continuing education courses. If you have any questions, give us a call at 1.800.554.2387.