New Somerset hospital units helping patients return home

Hospital patients in Somerset can now use specialist units to make sure they are more prepared to return home.

Musgrove Park and Yeovil District Hospitals have been running Ready To Go Units to support patients.

The idea is to use activity to avoid patients returning to hospital or needing extra care when they leave.

"We want people to be as independent as possible," said Jannine Hayman, senior matron for integrated and urgent care at Musgrove Park.

She said the units were a "new concept" for the NHS in Somerset.

"The reason it has been set up is that we have many patients who are medically fit for discharge. We are looking at the benefits for our patients so we can reduce the number of days they stay in hospital."

Gwendaline Bawden, 86, from Exmoor, said: "There's a young lady comes in and we do exercises with rubber balls and all sorts of things."

She believed it would be helpful as she prepared to go home.

"It's getting you used to the outside world," she said.

Michelle Purnell, a fitness instructor with Age UK Somerset, makes regular visits to the unit and encourages patients to go on short walks and practise grip strength training. She also uses music and interaction.

"I come on to the ward just to get people moving, to encourage them to just not sit by their beds the whole time.

"We try to get them to engage with each other - talk a bit more to their neighbours on each side - and to mobilise."

She said the response had been "brilliant and really positive".

"Seeing the difference in people from when you first come on to the ward when they're just sat there in their own little world, and then they change while I'm here which is really nice," she said.

Joanna Jackson, senior physiotherapist on the Ready to Go unit at Musgrove Park, said getting people back into being active was key.

"What we find with our older population is that if they haven't got a reason to get up and get busy and be active it's all too easy in a hospital setting that you just sit by your bedside," she said.

"They're going to decondition really quickly, they're going to become weaker, less able, and then when the services are available for them to go home, the patients are no longer physically able enough to get home.

"That's where we've been able to intervene and put lots of activity in place."

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