Tanya O’Sullivan and Renee Groenevelt
Hywel Dda University Health Board
Upper limb deficits are a common feature for people living with a neurological condition. They impact an individual’s participation in everyday tasks and roles, affecting independence and wellbeing. Recent evidence and guidelines recommend multidisciplinary, evidence-based, high intensity rehabilitation to maximise outcomes for individuals. However, with drivers to deliver care closer to home, but limited resources to deliver this level of rehabilitation in the community, an innovative solution is required. In addition, there is reduced knowledge and skills amongst clinicians to assess, formulate and deliver effective neurorehabilitation interventions, working in silos across a rural healthboard.
Our project aims to develop an evidenced based hybrid model for intensive upper limb neurorehabilitation, delivering a combination of face to face and online sessions for patients, that can be delivered to a cohort of 12 patients over the course of 3 weeks in a rural health setting.
We’ll work with patients and partners to maximise the opportunities to incorporate virtual rehabilitation resources, such as MOVELAB and Patient Knows Best to deliver the outcome measures, intervention resources and monitor adherence to programme.
We’ll design and deliver practical training to improve knowledge and skills of evidenced based interventions to a network of clinicians working with neuro patients with upper limb deficits. Ultimately, these clinicians will form part of a yearly roster to facilitate the upper limb rehabilitation programmes, whilst continuing to develop their own skills.
The project will be evaluated, measuring the impact on patients, their carers, and the healthboard. We anticipate the programme will deliver value and impact, improving the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of upper limb neurorehabilitation for patients and services. We hope to improve therapists’ knowledge and skills and job satisfaction. We will make recommendations for the future delivery of the programme within HDUHB and scaling up to deliver in other rural health boards.
