As I get ready to head to Chicago for ABAI’s 42nd International Conference, my thoughts go to all the wonders behavior analysis can offer the world. By focusing on behaviors and its relationship with the environment, behavior analysis affords its practitioners the opportunity to work with challenges from which many other disciplines shy away. 
During this weekend, I will get to meet people working to teach functional skills to children with autism, people working to increase safety in a variety of industrial settings, people working to improve performance and improve quality of life at work, people studying the basic side of the behavior science, and me—working to decrease the use of restrictive interventions in psychiatric settings. A quick glance at Special Interest Groups will show you how diverse are the fields in which behavior analysts have been working.
During meeting like this, ideas are born, connections are established and little seeds that lead to change in the world are planted. I am excited to be part of this. I am particularly excited to be presenting during a symposium on Monday, speaking about some performance interventions to address communication during shift change report, which in turn, had an effect on safety and patient experience.
I will be twitting throughout the weekend to keep you informed about all the great things I see (@behaviormagic). Enjoy the weekend!
I agree that alternative interventions should be considered in the psychiatric settings.
I’m looking forward to reading your article fro the NYP symposium.
Thank you. If you have any questions about it, let me know.