Occupational Therapy News OTnews January 2019 | Page 42

FEATURE HORTICULTURAL THERAPY
Occupation as rehabilitation
Sophie Cook and Joe Scoble look at the positive outcomes from establishing
a gardening group in a specialist amputee rehabilitation setting
T
he Amputee Rehabilitation Unit (ARU) is a 12-bed inpatient
unit specialising in the early stages of post-operative
rehabilitation for both upper and lower limb amputees.
The team, made up of physiotherapists, occupational
therapists, rehabilitation assistants, rehabilitation nurses and counsellors,
works to support patients to return home as functionally independent as
possible, whether as a new prosthetic limb user or as a wheelchair user.
Our patient population comes from patients who have sustained
amputation from a wide range of conditions, including vascularisation
impairment and diabetic complications, traumatic amputations and
sepsis.
For many of our patients, losing a limb is a distressing and
emotionally challenging life event and the services provided at the
unit focus not only on their physical, but also their psychological
rehabilitation.
Though a part of Guys and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, the
ARU is based off the main hospital site in a stand-alone unit, one which
42 OTnews January 2019