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Occupational therapist joins research team looking at post-COVID clinics
An occupational therapist has joined the research team looking at the work done in post-COVID syndrome assessment clinics .
Amy Parkin is on a research secondment at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust to look at work done by the COVID rehab team at Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust .
She has been interested in research since undertaking a research project as part of her MSc pre-registration training six years ago , and this was an opportunity away from a busy clinical role to develop her research skills with an experienced clinical research team .
’ I worked in the first COVID wave at a busy complex neuro rehabilitation centre , and I was aware at the time that Leeds has been leading the way with COVID research and development of clinical screening tools ,’ she says .
‘ A couple of my colleagues had published a major piece of research in July to look at outcomes following hospitalisation , and were one of the first teams to identify what we now know as ‘ prolonged COVID syndrome .’
Initially , one of the options was that Amy would work on a repeat of this research following up with patients after hospitalisation . Amy Parkin However , with the government ’ s announcement that £ 10 million would be invested in post-COVID syndrome assessment clinics in England , the team decided to put its efforts into researching outcome measures , screening tools and interventions that were being implemented .
The new COVID rehabilitation clinics include occupational therapists as part of the specialist multidisciplinary team . Government guidance on the new clinics say that occupational therapists can provide ‘ a personalised and occupation-focused approach to assessment such as cognition , delirium , mental health and functional outcome , independence and activity measures , including support for self-management and social prescribing ’ as part of the multidisciplinary teams .
Occupational therapists on the team also play a significant role in the management of fatigue , which Amy reports affects 70 per cent of service users .
The research team Amy joined had already developed the C19-YRS screening tool before she joined , which NHS England recommends for all COVID rehabilitation teams to use . There is also a larger piece of work ongoing to validate the tool as a wider COVID severity outcome measure , and capture the trajectory of prolonged COVID symptoms .
As part of Amy ’ s work , she adapted the C19-YRS screening tool with the COVID rehab team for use within initial triage . She has also written a COVID rehab team service description paper soon to be submitted for publication .
Says Amy : ’ Within this research secondment , I ’ m gaining experience from much larger research projects than I ’ ve been involved in before and learning what the whole research process involves , from establishing a robust research protocol to applying for ethics , alongside the validation process for outcome measures .’
Any has a mentor who is a clinical academic , and is also able to draw on the skills of the experienced researchers on her team through weekly meetings .
While she is working as a researcher in the team , rather than being employed as an occupational therapist , Amy has been able to draw on her training to support her work . With the majority of the people seen by the rehab team affected by fatigue , there is extensive use of occupational therapy in their recovery , making Amy ’ s background an asset in understanding the work she is researching .
‘ I ’ m really aware I have a functional perspective ,’ she says . ‘ I ’ ve just finished writing a paper today and the impact of prolonged COVID syndrome is definitely reflected within people ’ s valued roles , such as worker , parent and carer , not to mention the significant impact on people ’ s valued activities which really reflect the younger age group — the average age is 48 .’
The secondment is scheduled to run until the end of March , but there is scope for funding to continue , and Amy is mulling a pre-doctorate course into a clinical academic career .
‘ Occupational therapy as a whole is quite underrepresented in research ,’ she says . ‘ It can be hard to even find time to read research after work , let alone finding time to do it . But being aware of current research is vital in being able to clinically reason why we continue to do with patients to get the best possible outcomes for them .
‘ Being an occupational therapist can be entrenched in your identity and to move to something where you ’ re not employed as an occupational therapist is daunting . But you really can take your skills and perspective into other roles .’
Read the NHS England guidance , including the C19-YRS screening tool , at : www . bit . do / NHSEpost-covid-guidance .
8 OTnews January 2021