7 January 2023

Medicine for older people gym opens

Thanks to your donations, not only have the renovations for our Medicine for Older People gym been completed, but innovative and cutting-edge equipment is now in place for use with our patients.

Our Medicine for Older People team helps elderly people who have multiple conditions, functional impairment, and complex care needs.

This means they need specialist equipment.

This allows our staff to better care for and support our patients.

Here’s what a new exercise class looks like:

1. Exercise bikes
2. Interactive games
3. Chair exercises

Interactive games help our patients to have fun while moving around as part of their rehabilitation.

It is an easy way to distract them from doing exercise.

Thank you so much for your ongoing support of our Medicine for Older People department. You are helping our patients to get out of the hospital quicker through the use of targetted and fun rehabilitation!

“One of the specialist pieces of equipment we are using is a MOTOmed exercise device. This was developed for people with movement restrictions, and it complements the exercises already used by our teams.

These allow us to do both cardiovascular and strength resistance exercises for lower and upper limbs. It is fully flexible so it is suitable for patients who can stand, those in a wheelchair, and we can even take them to the patient’s bedside.

Our hope is that if we can show our patients that they can do this, even in hospital, that they can pick this up when discharged, either through exercises at home, in exercise classes, or gym programmes suggested by their GP.

It is also more than just exercise! There are games which the patients can play, including a racetrack where you can see your car going round which is fuelled by your legs or arms!” – Rachel McCafferty, Advanced Physiotherapist

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