In this bonus episode, Beth Collins, a clinical lead at Wellspect Healthcare, interviews colleague and friend Sallyanne Haigh on her recent surgery experience in a non-spinal setting. They discuss the significant gaps in SCI care and the lack of training and knowledge within these settings.
Sallyanne shares that despite the successful surgery, the post-op care she received was inadequate due to a lack of understanding of SCI. This experience highlights the urgent need for improved training and education for carers and nurses in non-spinal settings as many patients with SCIs report feeling neglected and misunderstood.
The opinions of our host and guests are their own; ISCoS does not endorse any individual viewpoints, given products or companies.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review and subscribe with the podcast provider of your choice.
This show is brought to you by ISCoS - you can follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn
The SCI Care: What really Matters podcast aims to provide valuable insights and the most up-to-date information for those providing care to people with spinal cord injury (SCI) worldwide. The vision of the International Spinal Cord Society (ISCoS) is to "facilitate healthy and inclusive lives for people with spinal cord injury or dysfunction globally".
Partnership and collaboration are key to achieving this vision. Our episodes include expert guests, persons with lived experience and representatives from the industry supporting SCI care.
In this bonus episode, Beth Collins, a clinical lead at Wellspect Healthcare, interviews colleague and friend Sallyanne Haigh on her recent surgery experience in a non-spinal setting. They discuss the significant gaps in SCI care and the lack of training and knowledge within these settings.
Sallyanne shares that despite the successful surgery, the post-op care she received was inadequate due to a lack of understanding of SCI. This experience highlights the urgent need for improved training and education for carers and nurses in non-spinal settings as many patients with SCIs report feeling neglected and misunderstood.
The opinions of our host and guests are their own; ISCoS does not endorse any individual viewpoints, given products or companies.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review and subscribe with the podcast provider of your choice.
This show is brought to you by ISCoS - you can follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn
The SCI Care: What really Matters podcast aims to provide valuable insights and the most up-to-date information for those providing care to people with spinal cord injury (SCI) worldwide. The vision of the International Spinal Cord Society (ISCoS) is to "facilitate healthy and inclusive lives for people with spinal cord injury or dysfunction globally".
Partnership and collaboration are key to achieving this vision. Our episodes include expert guests, persons with lived experience and representatives from the industry supporting SCI care.
Contact us directly with any questions or comments at iscos@associationsltd.co.uk
Speaker 1:
Welcome to our bonus episode of SCI Care. What really matters the Edinburgh Conversations. I am Dr Ali Jumous, the President of the International Spine Court Society. You are about to hear a selection of interviews recorded live in Edinburgh during the course of the 60 Seconds Excos Scientific Meeting. Each bonus track will have discussions with speakers, delegates, partners, Excos Committee chairs and teams attending the Excos 2023. Join us to find out what the hot topics of the day are within SCI Care. We hope you enjoy listening.
Speaker 3:
Good morning. My name is Beth Collins. I work as a clinical lead at Wellspect Healthcare. I'm joined today by Salianne Haig, who is also one of our continent's nurses, and Salianne lives with a spinal cord injury. We were very fortunate back in 2020 to be able to record a podcast with Excos. We were travelled far and wide. At the time, I was actually at the Paralympic Games and Salianne was at home. We recorded the podcast around the story of Salianne's journey of her spinal injury. We're actually at Excos at the moment. We've been working with a sinus symposium, living with a spinal cord injury outside as a non-spinal setting, and Salianne recently underwent some surgery in a non-spinal environment, which I'm sure that she'll share his story with. We've also been fortunate enough to be able to provide some sessions around long-term safety with intermittent capitalisation and also trans-analytic irrigation for patients with spinal cord injury. Salianne, maybe you could tell us about the subject that you covered at the symposium yesterday.
Speaker 2:
Yes. So I did a session working and speaking with Debbie Green, who's the lead clinician for the Spinal Injuries Association charity within the UK. So they've been doing a campaign called this Shit Gets Serious and it's looking at patients with a spinal cord injury whose bladder and bowel management is addressed. If he went into a non-spinal setting so it could be post-op hospitalisation in general hospital about how many people need arm met within that environment. So I was fortunate, or unfortunate enough to have to have surgery myself this year. So I've had a spinal injury for eight years, with quite a few years of complications with bladder management, and it was decided this year that I would need to undergo some surgery to help improve things. And it did decide, and then that I wasn't in a spinal specialist setting, so it was a general hospital general urology surgery. My surgery was dealt with very, very well I can't complain about that but my spinal injury wasn't really addressed.
Speaker 2:
Obviously, as you know, we have our bladder and bowel sort of neurogenics status and I normally do the RE, which is digital rectoreveral, on a daily basis to manage my spinal injury and my bowel care was not addressed while I was an inpatient in the hospital. So you know we went through quite a series of emotional days having to deal with that. Even though we talked about it, it was deemed that the nurses on the ward actually said that they wouldn't be able to perform the procedure because it was a risk and they wouldn't be happy to do it. So it would have to be a doctor. Doctor said to me oh, three days, four days post-op, we can just discharge you. You normally have to have your bowels out before you go home, but you'll probably just manage it better when you get back home. And obviously then it was my sort of issue that I had to manage. I'm very difficult when dealing with a post-op injury, having to be independent enough to be able to do that, and it was an impossible to manage at home Salient.
Speaker 3:
Do you think that that's due to the fact that the nursing staff or the healthcare professionals within the non-spinal setting are just not used to dealing with with bowel issues? They don't actually have the knowledge, they don't have the training to actually feel confident enough to provide that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, absolutely. They didn't have the knowledge. They actually saw having to do DRE on this patient with spinal injury. I mean, they mentioned autonomic dysreflexia and obviously that was something that people with spinal injury can have, depending on your level. Due to my level of injury, I'm not at risk of autonomic dysreflexia, but they were just saying that they couldn't perform this activity because it was dangerous and unfortunately we didn't know enough to know that that wasn't an issue for me and tried to educate and say well, obviously it's more dangerous not to do these activities and it's a lack of knowledge and training issues. I think it would have been much better. They couldn't even go and find somebody who was able to do that within the nursing team. So it is an admission of care.
Speaker 3:
And what we're finding as a nursing team visiting patients in their own home to provide blood and bowel care and what we're finding is that we're actually having to provide education to these group of carers nurses or carers to actually explain how that they can actually give this management of care. Back in 2017 and 2018, there was a patient safety alert which basically said that anybody that was caring for somebody who was in the risk category for autonomic dysreflexia so somebody with a level of injury at T6 or above that their carers should actually have education around that. So we've spent a lot of time providing education. There's still a lack of knowledge that they think that just everybody's going to be in that risk category for autonomic dysreflexia, so it is a lack of knowledge. We're privileged that we're able to help provide that care and to provide that education and provide that knowledge to ensure that when someone is nursed in a non-specialist environment, that they're actually cared for adequately and safely, and actually that's a duty of care as a healthcare professional.
Speaker 1:
We hope you have enjoyed listening to our bonus collection of Edinburgh Conversation from ESCOS 2023. As always, you can listen to these episodes and all episodes from the podcast provider of your choice. If you have any questions or suggestions, we'd love to hear from you. Email them to admin at escosorguk. Escos also invites you to the 63rd ESCOS Scientific Anyone Meeting from the 22nd to the 25th of September 2024. To save the date and more details will follow on the 2024 themes submitting an abstract and early birth registration. Thank you for listening.
