Rehabilitation team

Antonio Cabungcal, Sudeesh Sudeesh, Haeyoung Kim, Yie Wei Sim, Marika Egete, Joy David

The rehab team at St. Joseph’s Auxiliary Hospital has embraced challenges over the past few years by collaborating as a team to look at how to best provide therapy to their residents during the COVID-19 pandemic. They have been successful due to the input gleaned from the entire multidisciplinary team and, most importantly, the involvement of the families and the residents they serve.

One example involves a husband who expressed concern that he was having difficulty transferring his wife from her wheelchair into his car in order to take her on outings and for home visits. The team worked together to look at how to improve the resident's mobility through specific exercises involving her husband and then reviewing safe transfer techniques. Over time the goal was achieved and the couple were able to enjoy their time away from the facility.

 Another example was a resident who was admitted into long-term care whose two goals were to be discharged home and to be able to go to her husband’s grave and drink a beer. This seemed insurmountable to the team as the resident was bedbound. However, through collaborating with the entire interdisciplinary team and identifying specific short-term goals, eventually the resident went from lying in bed to sitting, then standing, then walking with a walker. The entire process took more than one year, but she was eventually able to be discharged home and have her beer at her husband’s grave site.