Doing our bit to help flatten the curve.
Blue Goose Occupational Therapy provides paediatric and adult Allied Health Services- including paediatric and adult Occupational Therapy services, paediatric Speech Therapy and Physiotherapy and Podiatry (both paediatric and adult biomechanical assessments and treatment).
Paediatrics is my passion, but I love working with adults too. Being able to be a part of a family’s journey and being able to advocate for them when needed, is a privilege. OTs are very much the investigators of the allied health world and we work across the life span. That is why working in a team, (be it actual or virtual via great networking), is so important. Hence the reason we provide a whole range of services.
COVID 19 has created an interesting journey with lots of initial panic and worry, but as a team we totally reinvented our service. Like many others, we had to! Though, as healthcare practice, we are considered “essential services”, I made the decision that we would do our bit and help flatten the curve by all converting our sessions to Tele-health and work from home. This was not without its challenges. Getting paid was much slower as we mostly relied on clients to complete bank transfers instead of EFTPOS. Tele-health is exhausting and plays havoc on the body. Whilst fun and divine seeing the kid’s faces light up when they see you at the other end, it takes its toll. Never has ergonomics been so important.
As an OT who runs very active sessions, sitting all day is difficult! I am going to need a serious amount of bodywork from one of our local and amazing Remedial Massage Therapists once this is all over. In converting to Tele-health, we managed to hold our own. We are lucky to have a high proportion of NDIS clients, which means that their funding was not impacted by the economic crisis. We were successful in prepping parents successfully for Tele-health, with even those who thought it might not work, being pleasantly surprised.Kids LOVE tech and so this has been a resounding success. Even our adult OT services can be delivered via Tele-health and where it cannot we got our Personal Protective Equipment on and headed into the community.
OTs are an essential service which often prevents hospital admission to and assisting when preparing for discharge. Our Speech and Physiotherapy services also held their own, with our Podiatrist making the decision early on to suspend services due to the hands-on nature of his services making Tele-health extremely difficult.
Adapting to Covid-19 meant growing our service to add home program packages to those that wanted them, shorter sessions for those that could not manage the regular sessions, and parent coaching via phone. We have always said we provide a tailored service, and these times have put this to the test.
While it was certainly a difficult period, we were incredibly encouraged and were able to celebrate holding our own during these unprecedented times. Providing and developing a new service, providing Tele-health, which is now here to stay. We now know that we can provide services to rural and remote families and will continue to do so.Knowing that having good standing in the health community locally has been a gift to us and reaffirmed how important good networking is.
As mentioned, it was not without its struggles. Struggling with fatigue and knowing to adjust our services to factor this in and learning to being kind to ourselves.To not lose focus was hard, it took a few weeks to settle, but the new way of service provision paid off. Of course, we all had to learn how to juggle working from home with our families; home schooling, partners working from home, bored children!We’re not special though or different from anyone else, in this time, but we are extremely lucky to be working in an industry that allows us to adapt and change and with good planning, and hard work, we will come through this ok and start to get back to where we were before COVID-19
Anna Campbell Principal Occupational Therapist/Proprietor Blue Goose Occupational Therapy and Allied Health Services
A: Shop 2, Mead Street Mall, 14-16 Mead street, Kalamunda WA 6076
T: 0466 619 557