Hospital rehab services focused on greater quality of life

Whether it’s learning to speak correctly, regain strength of a injured limb, or adapt to life at home with a disability, the rehabilitation department at La Verendrye hospital here can provide the services to keep people in step with their lives.
Speech pathologists Lona Mohan and Lindsay Strickland have the job of assessing and treating disorders of communication, including language, speech, fluency (stuttering), voice, and swallowing disorders.
Speech pathology also helps soften the barriers associated with strokes, autism, and the hearing impaired.
“We don’t just see people that stutter,” Mohan said yesterday morning. “That [perception] is just a lack of awareness–but that’s true in any field.”
While they see a broad spectrum of age groups, both on an in-patient and out-patient basis, children by far make up the majority of their caseload, noted Mohan.
“We see mostly kids with who are language delayed–who aren’t talking or who aren’t using age-appropriate vocabulary,” Mohan said, adding while children come to the hospital for speech therapy, both she and Strickland also go into area schools to work one-on-one with students.
“We also work with language comprehension, like in a child who can’t follow simple directions,” she explained. “Perhaps that child was asked to pick up their pen, go to the chalkboard, and write their name–we help them to understand.”
“I think the best thing about this job is when you realize, ‘Wow! I really just made a difference there,’” Strickland smiled. “Each disorder is very challenging and you’re treating such a variety of them–you see it all.”
“Working one-on-one with a individual to improve communication in people’s lives is very rewarding,” agreed Mohan.
< *c>Problem-solving team
“Oh, you can treat that?”
That’s what Rob Barkley at La Verendrye hospital said was one of the most common reactions to the gamut of injuries able to be treated in the physiotherapy department there.
Focused on muscular-skeletal rehabilitation, this portion of rehab services helps bring out-patients “up to snuff” from sports-related injuries to those stemming from ergonomic aches and pains, post-surgery, fractures, and auto accidents.
In-patients recovering from strokes, surgery, respiratory difficulties, fractured hips, and a myriad of other ailments also benefit from the facility, which is equipped with some of the best medical rehab equipment available.
Barkley, who began his job there in November, said the best rewards come from the problem-solving team he and the other three physiotherapists form with their patients.
“A very important point about physiotherapy is that it is a participatory event, not a passive one,” he noted yesterday.
“And in the span of all the health-care professions, people in rehab will spend the most time with [their physiotherapists],” he reasoned.
“Helping return a patient to their pre-illness status [and] providing direction about where to go from here is very rewarding,” added co-worker and physiotherapist Nikki Bagacki.
“Where to go from here” also is a goal of the occupational therapy department, which melds its services with that of physiotherapy.
Occupational health care service provides treatment programs based on purposeful activity that helps lead people back into useful, self-sufficient lives after physical injury or illness, development, social, or emotional problems.
Occupational therapy also helps the elderly remain active in their daily lives at home.
“Independent living is what we aim [our patients] for,” occupational therapy assistant Janice Jewiss stressed yesterday. Occupational therapist Andrew Doer was not available for comment.
Their department provides training with adaptive devices for the home, such as grab bars for the bathroom, raised toilet and bath seats, and aids for the kitchen.
“Living at home is so very important but safety is, too,” said Jewiss.
Therapy centered around self-sufficiency also helps patients regain lost motion, get around using artificial limbs and braces, improve hand activities such as using keys, telephones, and faucets, and with homemaking skills by practising in a model kitchen.