FEATURE ACTIVITY
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The benefits activity co-ordinators bring
Jo Mcaulay looks at the work of activity co-ordinators within an occupational therapy model in an acute trust during 2019 , the first year they fell under the management of therapies
Nottingham University Hospitals ( NUH ) employ activity co-ordinators in a variety of settings ,
and within therapies we currently have activity co-ordinators on two Health Care of Older People ( HCOP ) wards .
The role of activity co-ordinator was new to therapies in HCOP in 2019 , having previously been employed by nursing staff to supply activity boxes across a number of directorates , and latterly to work across some of the HCOP wards delivering activity .
A central reason for bringing the activity co-coordinators under therapies management was the recognition that inpatient stays are associated with deterioration in function ( Falvey et al 2015 ), but that there was a lack of therapy time to engage in rehabilitation .
Embedding into the wards The first half of 2019 was spent familiarising the activity co-coordinator team with all of the HCOP wards , and team teaching in cognitive stimulation therapy ( CST ) to build their competence in using this as an evidence based approach ( Spector et al 2003 ).
From January until June , the activity co-ordinators worked across six of the HCOP wards , delivering one day a week on each , in order to identify environmental and service provision factors , to determine which wards would be best placed to be base wards .
From June to September , the team worked on two wards identified during this time , spending the morning on one ward and the afternoon on the other .
It was quickly recognised that afternoon provision was not equal to morning provision , due to a number of factors , including patient energy , number of visitors and working hours across the day .
38 OTnews December 2020