OT Week and The Impact of COVID-19: Hannah Hallam - Paedeatrics

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected us all in ways we couldn’t have imagined back when the first lockdown started in March. Over that last 7-8 months, we have all come together as a community to learn how to adapt and to cope with the stresses that the virus has put onto our everyday ‘normal’ lives.

As we adjust into the ‘new normal’ (again), and to mark the start of OT Week, I, along with my expert OT team at Julie Jennings and Associates, have reflected on how the Coronavirus pandemic has affected our work, and what we are doing to make sure we continue providing our vital services safely to those who need it most.

Across OT Week we will be highlighting each of the individual roles we undertake, to give a broader picture of life as an OT during the pandemic.

Hannah Hallam

Area of work: My speciality is Occupational Therapy Paediatrics.

Background experience: I specialise in Paediatric work as Lead Clinician of a Paediatric Department in a district hospital, and have 18 years' experience working as an Occupational Therapist in a clinical setting.

Impact of COVID-19 on working practice or your personal perspective

In March 2020, the children’s therapy team at Dewsbury was re-deployed into a variety of different areas to meet service demands elsewhere in the NHS of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two physiotherapists and I (as the OT) were asked to remain in their current roles to run the service; there were approximately 1000 children on the caseload.  We had to deal with issues of urgency including new referrals for children with significant neurological impairments, hospital discharges, head injuries, cancer patients, children post-surgery and those on the existing caseload with any postural, feeding or equipment needs.

We continued with face to face appointments, set up a virtual service and aimed to support as many families as possible as many were at crisis point.

Your OT perspective and what you can do to positive influence challenges imposed by the pandemic

Alongside continuing with face to face visits a fully ‘virtual’ service has now been set up by the children’s therapy team.  There are many new online resources for families to access including videos of therapy sessions. Clinics with the consultants are all done virtually through video link and we have worked with representatives from equipment companies to continue with assessments and provision when face to face visits are not supported.

We have made better links with services to work collaboratively in the community with different teams and charities to try to find ways to support families as a team and work much closer with education to continue to be able to provide a service into schools.

We are taking a student next week into the service so that we can continue to support and encourage and promote the OT profession while it is proving a very different learning experience and more technology based we hope to provide enough learning opportunities for a successful placement.

Your commitments to support the recovery of People that have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic

We continue to make adjustments to working practice so that all services can continue under the current guidelines and use professional judgement to assess risk and to make sure people receive safe care.