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St George’s Community Hydrotherapy Pool

E-Newsletter

Christmas Open Day

Issue 8

December 2013

In this issue:

Christmas Open Day Congratulations New Classes Manager’s Message Staff Profile Patients’ Results User Profile Contact Information

To see more photographs of the day, visit our Facebook page.

Please let us know your ideas for items that would make your and others’ enjoyment and use of the pool even

better!

St George’s Community Hydrotherapy Pool

hosted its annual Christmas Open Day on

Thursday 5th December, inviting Councillors and

members of the public in to find out more about

hydrotherapy and St George’s, and to raise

money for the Friends group.

The day was a great success, with many users and supporters of the

pool turning out to volunteer and have a go on our tombola and games

stalls, and devour our seasonal refreshments, kindly baked by pool

users and members of staff. In addition, we were delighted to

welcome to the pool Bryan Tyler (Disability Forum Manager and

Inspire Peterborough Project Manager), Leonie McCarthy (CEO of

Peterborough Council for Voluntary Service), Angela Burrows (COO

of Healthwatch), Jennifer Hodges (Signposting and Information

Officer, Healthwatch) and Chas Ryan (Stroke/CHD/Disabilities

Programme Manager , PCC), as well as Councillors John Shearman,

John Fox, Chris Ash, Adrian Miners and Bella Saltmarsh.

Organizations that made donations for prizes included John Lewis,

Boots at Serpentine Green and Rachael Bloom of Blooms

Therapies, Market Deeping. I should like to thank them for their

extremely generous contributions.

We raised £371.12 on the day, and by running some of the stalls for

another week, our final total for the Friends of St George’s Group is

over £600 - a fantastic achievement!

I wish to say thank you to everyone who attended for all your

munificent support. There are too many people to

name individually but I should particularly like to thank the many vol-

unteers we had, including those who gave their time to cover the

stalls, those who provided baked goods and those who donated so

many wonderful things for prizes and items on the tombola, games

and handmade card and gift stall. You truly are Friends of St

George's!

Tom Booker - Manager

Lifeguards Josh (as Mr T), Tara (as a penguin) and Ashley (as good ol’

Ashley) strike a pose!

Nikita and Trayce Smeeton on their beautiful handmade card and gift stall.

Our tombola stall was literally overflowing with wonderful prizes...

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Please join us for the next Friends meeting on Monday 13th January,

13:00 - 15:00 at St George’s Community Hydrotherapy Pool.

'Manager's Messages Board.'

On Twitter, we have finally broken the “200 followers” mark, which is superb.

www.twitter.com/pborohydropool “Don’t forget to “follow” and “retweet” us on Twitter

On Facebook, I have incorporated a “feedback” star system, where anyone who has used the pool can give us a star rating out of 5 for the service with a feedback comment. So far 3 people have used this, and have given us 5 stars each!

https://www.facebook.com/pages/St-Georges-Community-Hydrotherapy-Pool/425712647539214 Please “like” and “share” us on Facebook!”

Christmas Opening

Times

The pool will close for Christmas on Tuesday 24th December at 13:00 and will not re-open again until Friday 3rd January at 10:00.

Commissioning “We are in the final stages of talks with the NHS and hope to resume our commissioned service in January 2014. Meanwhile, our public sessions with a physiotherapist have already become our most sought-after and popular service. In 2014 I am delighted to say that we will be continuing these on Thursday and Friday afternoons – details to follow in the next newsletter!”

New classes In 2014, we will be providing two new services to users of the pool! We will be running:

• Baby swimming/water confidence sessions (potentially on Saturdays).

• “Movement to Music” aqua fitness classes (on Thursday afternoons and/or Saturdays).

If you are interested in either of these classes, please contact me for further details.

On January 18th from 10:00 - 17:00 we will be holding a stall at the Sporting Saturday event at the Cresset, Bretton.

The event will showcase Sports, Leisure, Health and Wellbeing activities for people with disabilities, older people and their health carers and family members.

Special guest Steve McFadden (who plays Phil Mitchell in Eastenders) will be making an appearance as well.

If you would like any further information, please contact Bryan Tyler at bryan@inspirepeterborough.com

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Regular lifeguard Tara Stone relishes and is well qualified for the special demands that working at a hydrotherapy pool brings. Before joining the team at St George’s, Tara was a carer helping people in their homes. Prior to this, she worked for eight years at the Regional Pool, gaining a wide range of experience and qualifications in the leisure industry. Originally, Tara studied and worked in Information Technology. Tara says she finds lifeguarding at St George’s particularly rewarding. “I enjoy working here; everyone is so easy to get on with. I like seeing our regular clients and building a relationship and rapport with them. I like the banter.” Tara likes to keep fit by swimming in her spare time, often completing 100 lengths during a session. She also developed a great in interest in photography after completing a course in 2004. She now has over 3000 photographs on file.

Here are two examples of Tara’s work, taken at Woburn Safari Park earlier this year.

Staff Profile:Tara Stone

We are delighted to announce that aquatic physiotherapist Lee Croft and his wife Theresa became the proud parents of beautiful baby daughter on 17th November. Baby Gwen, who weighed 7lb 5oz, came into the world, rather appropriately, in water. Everyone at St George’s would like to send congratulations to the family and wish them well. We look forward to welcoming Lee back to the pool in the New Year.

Congratulations to Lee...

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Summary of Commissioned Patients’ Results Using EQ-5D-5L

As you may recall from previous newsletters, St George’s used three different tests to measure patients’ health outcomes following hydrotherapy treatment. In this issue, we will summarize the results of the last of these tests: the EQ-5D-5L.

EQ-5D-5L is an internationally recognized questionnaire. To explain the title: EQ is the name of the group (EuroQol); 5D means the questionnaire has five health ‘Dimensions’ and 5L that these are measured at five ‘Levels.’ 56 NHS commissioned patients who received treatment at St George’s between September 2012 and March 2013 completed the questionnaire, which is in two parts. The first part required patients to rate the level of their health that day on a five-point scale (no problems, slight problems, moderate problems, severe or extreme problems) in each of the following five areas or dimensions: mobility, self-care, doing usual activities, pain/discomfort, anxiety and depression. The results from these five areas were then combined and converted into a single index value of health status, called the EQ-Index, where 1 = full health and 0 = death. The second part of the questionnaire is called the EQ VAS (visual analogue scale). This required patients to rate their health that day on a 0-100 printed scale where “0 means the worst health you can imagine” and “100 means the best health you can imagine.” Patients completed both parts of the questionnaire before their first session of hydrotherapy and then again after their second session with an aquatic physiotherapist. This was to see if hydrotherapy might have caused any change in their health.

The median EQ-Index value of the patients rose by 0.016 after the second session which showed a very slight improvement in the overall health of patients in the five dimensions.

Median EQ-Index Before Treatment and after Second Session of

Hydrotherapy

0.575

0.58

0.585

0.59

0.595

0.6

0.605

Before Treatment N=56 After Second Session N= 46

EQ-Index 0=Death 1=Full health

Median EQ-Index

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St George’s Research continued...

Friends and Family Test

We would like to thank everyone who, so far, has completed a Friends and Family Test for the pool. The results will appear in the next newsletter.

If you have not yet completed this, we would be extremely grateful if you could do so.

Copies of the test can be found in reception.

The median EQ VAS rose by 10 points, which suggests that patients rated their health to be better after their second session of hydrotherapy.

As health professionals generally advise a course of six hydrotherapy sessions, rather than two, to give maximum benefit, this suggests that the amount of improvement might have been even greater for patients after more sessions.

If you would like further information on this, the other tests, or a copy of the full report, please email: stgeorgeshydrotherapypool@peterborough.gov.uk

Median EQ VAS Before Treatment and after Second Session of Hydrotherapy

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Before Treatment N=49 After Second Session N= 43

EQ-Index 0=W

orst health 100=Full health

Median EQ VAS

Over 1,70

0 people

have now u

sed the po

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to our website.

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User Profile: Sophie’s Story

Within just a couple weeks of starting hydrotherapy at St George’s, Sophie Utting began to make a remarkable recovery from major hip surgery.

The 34-year-old mother of two, who works as a medical practice manager, is so passionate about St George’s and the benefits hydrotherapy can bring, she was willing to share her very personal story.

Sophie’s problems first appeared at the birth of her two sons: Archie seven and Charlie four. Both deliveries were difficult and so painful that she required caesarean sections. However, her problems continued and during the following months, she was in so much pain that she was unable to walk. Over the next three years there followed a number of referrals to various back specialists until finally it was discovered that she had previously undiagnosed bilateral hip dysplasia, a congenital condition where there is deformation or misalignment of the hip joint.

Sophie was referred to a leading orthopaedic hip specialist who decided that she required a preventative and corrective operation on her right hip called a periacetabular osteotomy. In this, the pelvis is cut, realigned and then pinned in place so it is in a better position to cover the ball of the hip joint called the femoral head. In Sophie’s case, the right side of her pelvis needed to be broken in three places to achieve this.

The full rehabilitation time from this surgery is normally around six months. However, at the end of this time, and despite extensive physiotherapy, Sophie was in still in enormous pain, unable to walk and her planned return to work had been unsuccessful. She had also begun to shake. “It was unbearable; nothing helped,” she says.

After eight months, when there had still been no improvement despite a steroid injection, the family in desperation sought a second orthopaedic opinion. It was only then the reason for her distress was discovered: Sophie had been attempting to walk with broken bones; she was shaking because her body had gone into physical shock.

It seems the realignment of the hip had been so great it had left her pelvis unstable. This meant her first attempts at weight bearing had caused a stress great enough to break her pelvis in two new places as well as the femoral head. She now had four unhealed fractures.

Story continues on the next page...

Diagrams to show a periacetabular osteotomy

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Sophie first entered St George’s pool exactly three weeks after surgery and everyone – including her consultant - has acknowledged that her recovery has been truly remarkable. She first came in using a wheelchair and says, “It took me so long to get into the water. My mum, who came with me, was so worried… I had three exercises; I could do none of them on land, but by the end of my second session in the pool I could do them all in the water.” Sophie came twice to the pool in the first week and three times in the second week. At the end of this, she was able to walk in using crutches. By the sixth week, she was finding her hydrotherapy so beneficial she was attending the pool five times a week. Six weeks to the day after surgery Sophie walked into St George’s unaided. It was thrilling moment for everyone.

It is now eight weeks since surgery and she attends the pool six times a week. What makes this even more remarkable is that Sophie travels from Rutland! “From the very beginning hydrotherapy has taken my stiffness away. It is noticeable if I do not have a session in the pool; it’s so different; my pain and stiffness certainly increase. It has also really helped with my strength. I have not had the same muscle wastage in my leg. I am now even starting to recover the wastage that followed the first operation. I can now lift my leg to 45º and I have not been able to do that for the past four years.” She says that using the different depths of water enabled her to start walking; firstly in deep water and then progressing to shallower depths. “My consultant agrees that walking and exercising in the water has got me to this juncture so quickly. He wants me to continue with it as I now have arthritis in my back and because I have made such amazing progress. He says swimming alone would not have been so beneficial. I have been off work for a year now. I am now in the best position to return once my consultant gives me the OK thanks to hydrotherapy.”

Sophie’s Story continued...

There was no alternative but for her new surgeon to pin and plate the breaks. This required three plates and eight pins. However, Sophie says, “Within two weeks I knew things were mending.” Her surgeon, a Cambridge Orthopaedic Consultant, immediately advised hydrotherapy and suggested Addenbrooke’s pool. But for Sophie, unable to sit normally and unable to sustain a position for more than 20 minutes, this simply was not possible; she realized travelling to a pool in Cambridge was too far to be of benefit. Therefore, she set about searching the internet to see if she could find a lo-cal one, and that is how she found St George’s.

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Contact Information

Bookings or general enquiries:

Email: stgeorgeshydrotherapypool@peterborough.gov.uk

Telephone: 01733 453 583

Address: Pool Manager,

St George’s Community Hydrotherapy Pool,

367 Dogsthorpe Road,

Peterborough, PE1 3RE

We Are Supported By

Public Session Prices:

£4 - per session £35 - block bookings of 10 sessions £10 - per public session with a physiotherapist

£90 - for private + Aquatic Physio Appointments are always necessary

Our website QR code

Our website is frequently updated, please take a look at:

www.sgchp.btck.co.uk

Public Opening Hours:

Monday 10.00 - 13.00

Tuesday 09.30 - 13.30

Wednesday 10.30 - 13.30

Thursday 13.00 - 18.00

Friday 10.00 - 14.00

Saturday 10.00 - 14.00

Sunday closed

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