Rehabilitation Services

The Inpatient Unit offers two specialist rehabilitation services for people living with either a life limiting respiratory disease other than cancer or a progressive neurological condition.

The aim of these services is to provide patients living with these conditions a toolkit of exercises to help with the physical and emotional difficulties they experience on a day-to-day basis. This in turn can allow them to feel more confident that they have some control over their quality of life.

During the Covid-19 pandemic these services are being offered via Zoom on a weekly or fortnightly basis.

Respiratory Rehabilitation is for people with a life limiting respiratory disease other than cancer who have a specialist respiratory nurse allocated to them - only this nurse can refer people.

Ordinarily Inpatient Unit admission is for one week to be fully assessed by the Physiotherapist and Occupational Therapist and are given therapeutic activities and techniques for the goals the patient agrees. Inpatients are also given a medicines review by the doctors who may prescribe different medications to help with their breathing and are reviewed at the end of the week to see if the interventions have helped with their symptoms.

Patients are are then discharged to the care of their specialist nurse who continues their care as usual.

We are currently supporting this patient group via Zoom sessions run weekly or fortnight for 6-8 weeks. Remote patients are not able to access the medicines review but all other aspects of the service are the same.

The programme for neurological conditions is the same except admission would be for 10 days. All neurological referrals are made via the Neurological specialist, Dr. Chandler.

Currently this patient group are being seen for 6-8 weeks via Zoom and discharged to the care of the community team.

For more information please contact our Occupational Therapist, Jacqui Greenhalgh on j.greenhalgh@highlandhospice.org.uk.