Share review of Ashford Hospital

Ashford Hospital 2021-08-05 Person 5 5 0

I was referred to physio from a&e within a week of injuring my knee. I had my first telephone call from physio within two weeks and I proceeded with all my care and exercises for four months from the physio department via video calling. My first appointment was at my place of work and I did the call on my mobile. I found this quite tricky on my mobile phone because of the small screen viewing exercise demonstrations, plus I had a large yellow text box across the screen telling me the connection speed was poor. However, my physio was great at talking through the instructions and showed great patience with this and I had a few technical difficulties on this day right at the beginning. After that I was able to do video calls at home using my laptop. This was so much better for using a larger screen and I was able to check out my internet speed, sound, microphone, camera beforehand. Each time my connection worked well and I live in an area where it can be really poor. I just needed to add my name , date of birth and phone number. Click on to make the video call and I was placed in a ‘waiting room’ until my physio was ready for me. Best to join early , in plenty of time, in case of any technical issues. In my job I have had to get use to using teams and zoom calls with lots of different problems and I was dreading the same sorts of issues but I have to say this system was so quick , easy to connect to and use! I received emails following every session with my new exercises as discussed in the video call and it was always clearly demonstrated to me by my physio and I was always able to copy and have immediate feedback on how I was doing. I was always given an opportunity to ask questions and score pain levels simply , recap on previous exercises and give information on what I could and still couldn’t do. My job involves early years and my physio asked me for detailed information on how my injury impacted my job and the exercises given were an excellent gradual progression to recovery. The focus was always on making a full recovery and being able to do everything I could do before my injury. Getting down to the floor and kneeling, being one extremely important function I had lost but was able to regain within three months. Certainly easier to have video calls at home rather than losing a whole morning visiting hospital and avoiding parking issues and parking fees. I personally think this is a great system to offer video calls to patients in the comfort of their own home, especially if they aren’t able to drive due to their condition. I strongly would recommend video calls to anyone who has access to a laptop.