Technology brings the world to Bexhill Hospital patients
Bexhill Hospital’s Irvine Unit patients are benefitting from rehabilitation care which allows them to travel the world.
Patients using sophisticated new exercise machines, funded by the League of Friends, can select the choice of view – including The Taj Mahal, Paris, Rome – onscreen as they pedal (or hand-propel) themselves to a level of fitness that will allow them to return to their homes.
The two Tor Theratrainers cost £25,990.
Physiotherapy Unit staff were gathered to greet League representatives to thank the League.
Colourful bunting decorated the exercise area and tea, scones and cakes awaited the visitors. The large-screen television, a previous League gift which allows the unit to communicate rehabilitation exercises across the East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust area, was displaying a “Thank you League of Friends” message.
League Chair Nigel Ray, Treasurer Chris Ashford and Trustee Graham Cox together with President and Secretary John Dowling learned how one group of patients had corporately pedalled the equivalent of the 100 kilometres between Bexhill and Paris in one venture.
Emma Quigley, Team Lead Physiotherapist for the unit’s award-winning Specialist Stroke Rehabilitation Team, escorted Chris Ashford to a wheelchair adjacent to the machine and showed him how to choose between foot or hand propulsion and how to opt from a world-wide choice of place settings and resistance levels.
Then it was the League Chair’s turn to sample one of three highly specialised patient chairs. Together with another example for use in the shower, the chairs cost £9,986.
Julie-Ann Nuess, Service Manager, Intermediate Care, explained how the electrically-adjustable chairs with their infection-control surfaces, are allowing staff to assess patients’ needs before their discharge so that aids appropriate to home use can be provided.