Occupational Therapy News July 2020 | Page 30

FEATURE REHABILITATION
Adapting to a pandemic
Clare Cole explains how a neuro-rehab unit has adapted to COVID-19
© GettyImages/Joe_Potato
The Chantry, a Sue Ryder neurological care
centre, operates a level two neuro-rehabilitation
unit in Ipswich, Suffolk. Opened with only three
beds in September 2018, it expanded to six
beds a year later, when the majority of the current therapy
team were recruited.
As such, the team was working through the
‘storming’ phase of team development and settling into
newly-developed ways of working when the COVID-19
pandemic swept across the UK.
The unit is based within a specialist neurological
nursing home, so infection control measures to protect
vulnerable residents were at the forefront of everyone’s
minds.
In rehab, we were suddenly faced with an influx
of referrals, receiving more in one day than we had in
the previous month. At the same time, staff sickness
escalated and some referrals had to be declined on the
basis that we did not have sufficient nursing cover to
safely care for them.
Our local clinical commissioning groups (CCGs)
contacted us and requested that we set up a temporary
block contract for all six of our beds; usually they are spot
purchased.
As part of this contract it was agreed that we needed
to suspend our usual 12-week rehab pathway and instead
we were now commissioned to rehabilitate patients to the
point that they could safely be discharged home.
In practice, this generally meant accepting patients who
were currently assistance of two and progressing them to
being assistance of one.
In accepting patients at the more complex end of our
usual criteria, we also sometimes provided several weeks
of assessment and input before arriving at the decision
that we would be unable to make a functional change for
these patients and, as such, they required a nursing home
placement.
It was challenging for existing patients and families to
accept that they would not receive the full amount of input
that they had been expecting, and that they would be
30 OTnews July 2020