OT at Mayo General moves to new purpose-built area

Monday, 11 July 2011 11:43

THE occupational therapy (OT) department at Mayo General Hospital, Castlebar, has been relocated to a new purpose-built area within the hospital.
The OT department is now based on the second floor near to the medical wards, while the oncology unit, which had been there previously, has also relocated to a new dedicated purpose-built space within the hospital campus.
Some small structural changes were carried out to enable the OT department to provide assessments and treatments such as splinting, postural assessments, cooking and meal preparation assessments within a comprehensive rehabilitation centre in the heart of the hospital.
Gracia Gomez-Kelly, occupational therapy manager, Mayo General, said: "Following completion of these works, the OT department is now in an even better position to offer an excellent standard of care and professionalism by means of quality interventions within a single space.
"This results in an immediate benefit for OT patients and these interventions are improving patients' potential during their stay in hospital and are also facilitating in discharge planning outcomes."
OT assesses the patient's level of function by observing the patient's quality of performance in self-care skills - bathing, dressing, feeding and mobility, and then treating the deficits identified and their impact on function and safety in areas such as upper and lower limbs, posture, functional mobility and cognition–perception.
Ms. Gomez-Kelly explained: "The overall aim of our treatments is to maximise the patient's functional independence and safety level so, in the hospital setting, following our interventions, we make recommendations for an optimal safe discharge plan - need for rehabilitation, long term placement, home care packages - and offer education programmes to the patient's family, hospital staff and other caregivers to promote that optimal function and overall safety."
The newly located OT department has specific designed areas to carry out OT treatments and assessments such as kitchen, cooking and meal preparation assessment area, splinting and upper and lower limb treatment area, physical and postural assessment and activities daily living re-training areas, cognitive and perceptual and limb function assessment room, which is also used to meet relatives and carers and a bathroom assessment area
The hospital occupational therapy team at the core of this ongoing effort to facilitate independent living styles and quality of life for patients is made up of three OT professionals, dealing with 1,100 new patients per year.
Each member of staff is directing particular effort to critical care patients and, because of this, they take care of high dependency referrals from the male and female medical, surgical, elderly/stroke and orthopaedic wards.
The team also offers some outpatient services and performs pre-discharge home visits when it is considered necessary to facilitate an easier transition for the patient from hospital to home.
Ms. Gomez-Kelly added: "Since we have relocated to this new space, we are managing our resources in a more effective manner and we would, therefore, envisage we should be able to deal with more new patients and increase the number of interventions per patient by the end of the year.
"We are also now in a good position to further develop as a fieldwork education site for O.T. students from Ireland and abroad, and anticipate that fieldwork education will also play a big part in the spread of the quality of our work following the student's completion of each experience within our services."