Home For Christmas blog - Charlotte Ayres, Physiotherapist
We are sharing the stories of our colleagues about how they are helping to get patients home and support them over Christmas.
Charlotte Ayres is a physiotherapist who works for the Urgent Response Service in Southampton, helping to reduce hospital admission by providing therapy, nursing and care to people in their own homes.
My role is to provide early rehab to get people moving and exercising and assess for and provide any equipment to ensure safe manual handling.
Our roles within the team often overlap, which is what makes this team really interesting to work for. We often deal with complex, challenging cases. Typically we see people with infections, injuries that have worsened, falls, reduced mobility and increased requirement in care.
The service we provide often comes at a point of crisis in someone’s life and to be able to support and make a difference for this person is hugely rewarding.
The early supported discharge means people get out of hospital sooner, which not only improves their quality of life, but reduces the risk of catching further infections or becoming more deconditioned in hospital.
This is an invaluable service in helping to keep people out of hospital and supporting those in hospital to come out sooner, particularly at this time of the year where people want to be at home to celebrate Christmas with their families.