Rehab team support recovering Covid-19 patients
Helena Whitfield found herself on the frontline of the pandemic when she was redeployed to work in intensive care earlier this year.
“I’d never experienced anything like it,” recalls the occupational therapist who remembers being faced with a ‘sea of unconscious patients’ while getting used to long shifts working in PPE equipment.
She took observations, provided personal care and acted as a ‘bed buddy’ keeping an eye on patients.
Helena’s experience of intensive care as an occupational therapist had been limited to occasional visits supporting patients with brain injuries but she found her four week redeployment turning into a longer secondment with the Covid Rehabilitation Team.
Helena said: “Patients really appreciated the rehabilitation team continuing to support them once they were well enough to be stepped from intensive care. I remember a patient saying he recognised my voice from looking after him as a bed buddy, despite being sedated at the time.”
Patients regaining consciousness were often confused and delirious and Helena and her colleagues supported them with the help of orientation boards and compiling ‘my story’ booklets explaining what happened to them, how long they had been hospital and what treatment they had received.
Helena added: “Their time in intensive care was a blank space in their lives and the book helped bridge that gap.”
Specialist physiotherapist Ioan Morgan was responsible for co-ordinating the work of the team which included physiotherapists and occupational therapists previously deployed to intensive care as part of the nursing and proning teams.
Ioan said: “Muscle mass and joint mobility rapidly decline when patients can’t move so we set up the team to get people up and moving after they came off sedation. This allowed the specialist intensive care physiotherapists to focus on the complex respiratory needs of these patients.
“Therapists like Helena already had hands-on experience of these patients and continued that journey with them until they were well enough to go home.”
The majority of people were discharged from hospital just two weeks after leaving intensive care.
The rapid turnaround came despite often painfully slow rehabilitation where patients at first struggled to even lift their own arm unaided, before progressing to sitting on the edge of the bed and then onto a bedside chair.
Helena added: “We found several small daily sessions were the most effective because people quickly got mentally and physically fatigued.
“My job is helping people recover day-to-day skills that the majority of us take for granted like getting washed and dressed and moving around.
“A lot of our work is goal based and sometimes the simplest requests are the most meaningful, like the patient who wanted to be strong enough to hug his mum.
“The best part of the job is seeing these people come from being critically ill to walking out of hospital. It’s a great feeling and occupational therapists now have a dedicated presence in intensive care as part of the complex rehabilitation team.”
The rehabilitation team has treated more than 70 patients since it was set up in April but has downsized in recent months as the number of Covid patients has fallen with staff return to their day-to-day roles.
Ioan added: “We’ve all learnt a lot in recent months and the team has worked really well in helping people back onto their feet.”