The Regional Therapy Department for the Sun Country Health Region has a wide range of services available to residents of the southeast area with the goal to improve their quality of life in whatever health circumstance they might find themselves, members of the Weyburn Rotary Club heard at their luncheon on Thursday.
Natalie Bieberdorf, the regional director of therapy services for Sun Country, spoke about the range of services and the needs that her staff members are serving.
Mainly there are physiotherapists and occupational therapists, with specialized areas such as pediatric therapists who deal with those with physical or cognitive deficiencies or disabilities, dementia and degenerative diseases such as ALS and multiple sclerosis.
Occupational therapists help those who have a disability or are stroke patients, people who have to relearn everyday activities. These therapists go to all of the long-term care facilities in the southeast, ranging from Coronach to Kipling to Carnduff, along with Weyburn and Estevan and everywhere in between.
Bieberdorf said a little-known fact is that people can self-refer to a therapist.
“You don’t have to have a doctor’s referral to access our services. You can come into the department and fill out a form,” said Bieberdorf.
Patient counselling is under this department, along with falls prevention, as falls is the sixth leading cause of deaths in seniors, and about 40 to 50 per cent of admissions to long-term care facilities are due to patients having a fall and are in need of recovery, said Bieberdorf.
The therapists work in concert with many other services in Sun Country, such as home care and mental health, as well as in the community generally.
Some therapy services are being offered in Sun Country that didn’t used to be available here, such as in pediatric therapy and for lymphedema patients. To obtain some of these services, patients had to go to Wascana Rehabilitation Centre in Regina, but now these services are available in Weyburn and Estevan, said Bieberdorf.
In total, the regional therapy department has 31.6 full-time equivalent positions, of which 4 FTEs offer patient counselling, and there are 26.6 FTE therapists.
Physiotherapists handle about 159 new referrals a month of 1,912 referrals in the past year. There were 256 inpatients served, and 1,456 outpatients, and 73 are in the lymphedema program, with therapist offices in Weyburn, Estevan, Arcola, Carlyle and Redvers.
Occupational therapists do home visits and travel throughout the Sun Country region, while physiotherapists don’t usually do home visits.
“One of the challenges we have is filling positions when they come open,” said Bieberdorf, noting currently there are vacancies for one physiotherapist and two occupational therapists. The hardest to fill is when a therapist goes on maternity leave.
“Maintaining specialty programs are a real challenge, such as for the lymphedema program,” she added.
She explained this program began from cancer support groups, and is intended for those whose lymph glands are damaged, and the program helps these patients manage their health. “If you can manage it, you don’t have ongoing problems. This is a way of massaging it and healing it. These people are at constant risk. There’s a lot of self-management, and home care gets involved. It’s good that this program is here. When it was in Regina, people had to travel there to access these services, but we have a person trained to do it.”
Another challenge for Sun Country, and for all health regions in Saskatchewan, is that to get trained as occupational therapists or speech-language therapists, students have to travel out of province. OTs have to be trained in Edmonton or Winnipeg, while speech therapists have to go to either Edmonton or Minot, N.D.
The staff who are in Sun Country are excellent people, said Bieberdorf. “I hear compliments all the time about our staff. They are a great, dedicated staff and they’re really committed to helping people.”
One of the issues they have is people who make appointments but don’t follow through with them, which causes problems with scheduling for those who need therapy. “This is an issue for us. If anyone has ideas on what we could do, let us know. The wait lists are long.”
