During National Rehabilitation Week, we are highlighting our services offered at Christ the King Manor. We offer three different types of therapy services 6 days per week.
On average, about 60-65% of residents who are admitted to our skilled nursing unit and received rehabilitation treatments were able to return back to their normal lives.
Physical therapy can help with muscle pain, gait dysfunction, standing balance, endurance, and rehab following surgeries, which includes improving the range of motion in joints following injuries/surgeries. Our Therapy Department also provides brace fitting/adjustments, management with walkers, rollators, and canes. We also focus on fall prevention, edema management, and improving leg strength and stability. In physical therapy, showing residents how to use/set up their walker properly is also touched on. When residents go home, they are sent with individualized exercise packets and a TheraBand, which allows them to do the exercises on their own time at their own pace.
Occupational therapy can help with positioning in a wheelchair, while regaining independence with activities of daily living and instrumental activities of daily living, which includes 'community integration'. Learning to more efficiently clean, cook, get in and out of the shower, and fall prevention are all focused on within occupational therapy. In our therapy department, we make sure you are prepared to integrate back into your home life. One major area that is focused on is the bathroom. Getting in and out of the shower is where many falls occur. Before heading home, our team gives tips on where to put grab bars and other types of equipment that can be placed in bathrooms to help prevent falls. Most of the time occupational therapy focusses on the upper body, like, lifting oneself off of a chair or bed.
Speech therapy provides education on how to use communicative devices to improve speech intelligibility and safety. This type of therapy helps improve swallowing, memory and cognition, communications, and speech-language. At Christ the King Manor, we have different types of equipment that can help retrain muscles in the throat to promote swallowing. One of the equipment pieces offered here is where we put electrodes on the throat area. When a resident goes home from speech therapy, med reminders are encouraged to be used to help cognitively.
We do have some new equipment including our Game Ready and our neurogym tech walking device. We have all the latest modalities for pain management such as FX2 e-stim (for pain control), diathermy, moist heat, ultrasound. Another new device that was recently donated to us is one that helps with pain. One of the residents' favorite sessions is where the machine works while a therapist manually massages the resident.
With any questions about our therapy department, please head to: ctkmanor.org/therapy
...or you can call (814)371-3180
Happy Rehabilitation Awareness Week!
Author: Trish Hopkins
Title: Rehabilitation Director & Occupational Therapist