Talks called on regional hospital

Press, 6 March 1984, Page 9

Talks called on regional hospital

The feasibility of esetablishing the New Zealand’s first regional rehabilitation hospital at Burwood Hospital will be discussed at a meeting in Christchurch on March 16.

Representative of the deEartments of Health, abour, Social Welfare and the Accident Compensation Commission will > meet senior members of the Canterbury Hospital Board to consider the rehabilitation services provided by the board, with the focus on those at Burwood. A member of the board and director of the spinal unit at Burwood, Mr W. L. F. Utley, said the board wanted to establish a hospital which would provide for all aspects of rehabilitation.

Under the present economic restrain the establishment of such a hospital would require financial assistance from other associated departments. Discussion at the meeting would centre on ways in which these departments could be integrated and organised to ensure that people, after accidents and illness, had the optimum services for rehibilitation, and that money was better managed, said Mr Utley. At present the main emphasis of hospital staff was to medically rehabilitate people, to get them feeling as well as possible, and enable them to be as independent as possible with regards to personal hygiene and care.

They were then discharged from the hospital and came under the supervision of other agencies and departments for social and work rehabilitation. “Rehabilitation should be planned as a continuous process,” said Mr Utley. It was important ’that during the time patients were in hospital their needs for social rehabilitation and work

abilities were assessed and this assessment used to involve them in recreational and work-related activites.

Much of their rehabilitation should involve activities they would be doing when back in the community, he said. “In other countries the rehabilitation services are very much more hospital based than in New Zealand,” said Mr Utley. Burwood Hospital had the opportunity of establishing a pilot scheme for hospitalbased rehabilitation in New Zealand.