By Leanne Rees
Names: Lydia Chen (left) and Helen Patterson (right)
Occupations: Physiotherapists
Location: Royal North Shore Hospital, SCI Unit, Sydney.
It was lovely to catch up with Lydia and Helen this week. Lydia and I worked together in 2013 when she was a grade 1 physiotherapist rotating through SCI rehabilitation at Austin Health in Melbourne, and Helen, a student in SCI rehabilitation at Austin Health in 2008. Fast forward a few years, and here we all are. I caught up with Lydia and Helen to hear about the recent ‘Physiotherapy management of people with spinal cord injuries’, hosted by Royal North Shore Hospital and the Kolling Institute, and co-ordinated by them.
What was the motivation to run a course on physiotherapy management in SCI?
Helen: Some people with SCI don’t come through a specialised SCI unit, and with NDIS, more people with SCI have greater access to local therapists, who may not have SCI experience. Bearing in mind our last course was in 2016, we decided it would be great to offer a course to help upskill physiotherapists in SCI care. It took about five months in the planning, and what really helped was having a team who were keen to get this up and running. It was a lot of work, but being able to spread the load across the group made it much easier.
How many physiotherapists attended?
Lydia: We had 61 physiotherapists, mainly from across New South Wales, but there were also some from lower Queensland and Adelaide.
What was the feedback from participants?
Lydia: We had great feedback. We wanted to present content that would reflect a patient journey, so we had physiotherapists from Prince of Wales, Royal North Shore Hospital, Royal Rehab and the spinal outreach service present on acute management through to community management.
Helen: Participants really appreciated having these physiotherapists attend over the two days because questions often led to impromptu panel discussions that offered deeper insight into physiotherapy SCI management and care. Participants also appreciated the inclusion of people with SCI, especially for the wheelchair skills session.
Is there anything you would differently next time?
Helen: We would look at including people with lived experience of SCI more so, especially for practical components like teaching bed mobility and transfers.
Lydia: We would also be more mindful about what resources, as in devices and technology, are available to community therapists. To ensure relevance, we realised that it wasn’t necessarily useful to showcase some devices and technology if people didn’t or couldn’t have access to them.
What was something that you got out of the course?
Helen: Even though we both knew the people with SCI who helped present some of the course content, we learnt so much more about their lived experience by nature of participants asking them questions that led to them speaking freely about their journey, including what was good or what was hard. That was a great learning experience.
Will you run another course?
Helen: When we recover from this one! But yes, there is certainly the demand for it.
Thank you so much for your time Helen and Lydia, and I’m looking forward to seeing what course you run in the future.