http://www.newshub.co.nz/nznews/new-stroke-rehab-gets-patients-back-in-their-homes-2016092218
A pilot scheme is getting stroke patients out of hospital and back into their homes faster.
Instead of spending time in a rehabilitation ward, specialist teams in Waitematā are going mobile.
After suffering a stroke in May, John Rennie could barely hold a pen.
"Speech was a little slurred initially… [I] couldn't
hold a knife and fork, couldn't feed myself properly with my right
hand, couldn't walk properly, I had to have a walker in hospital to get
anywhere," he says.
But he was out of hospital in a week as part of a
pilot that sees a team of specialists come to him with intensive
rehabilitation at home.
Clinical director of Geriatric Medicine at Waitematā
DHB, John Scott, says the idea is to give patients a tailored service
to meet their own goals and needs.
"Some of the practice things that you do can seem a
little artificial and constrained, [like] why am I trying to walk up
these five stairs in a gym," says Dr Scott.
"It's more meaningful if you're back in your own
home, trying to use your own bathroom, your own kitchen, walk around
your own yard."
For Mr Rennie it was walking and getting back to playing bowls, signing his name, and making the family meals.
"Being able to be in a place where you can do normal things when you want to, was huge," he says.
"Like drying dishes and cooking food and chopping vegetables and things like that, which was good therapy anyway."
Around 25 Kiwis a day have a stroke and while this scheme doesn't save money, it does free up hospital beds.
And it's proving popular with patients.
"The
feedback from patients was unanimously positive, that getting out of
hospital and back into their own environments benefited both their
experience and their health outcomes as they saw it," says Jay O'Brien,
Waitematā DHB patient experience manager.
Not
everyone will qualify and those who are sick and need hospital care will
remain on a ward, but they hope to get 200 Waitematā patients through
the scheme in the first year.
If successful, it could be something that's repeated across the country.
More cherry picking. Many stroke survivors never regain the ability to write with their affected hand.
ReplyDeleteI was no different, ability-wise, after 30 days of inpatient hanging around than I was after the first day, with the exception of knowing techniques to dress myself. During my frustrating stay in rehab, no one would tell me when I'd be able to go home, but some rogue did tell me that I'd stay as long as my insurance would pay. Turned out it was 28 days.
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