As we get ready to celebrate Allied Health Professionals (AHP) Day on October 14, we’re sharing the inspiring stories of our incredible AHP team and the positive impact they’ve made across our services at Hampshire Hospitals.
Meet Hannah Leland, Senior Occupational Therapist at Hampshire Hospitals: 
1. Tell us about your profession and what inspired you to choose this career path?
I work as a Senior Occupational Therapist within the Acute Therapy Team at Basingstoke Hospital. Alongside being one of the clinical team leads for Aute Therapy I also head up the Therapy Early Discharge (TED) Service, which helps to get patients out of hospital sooner and safer through therapy intervention.
I love that the role of an Occupational Therapist can be so varied; We can work in so many different areas from schools to mental health and even prisons! In our role we look at the holistic factors that impact the person, and work with the person, their loved ones, and the wider multidisciplinary team (MDT) to help the person achieve their potential.
- How do you support and deliver care to patients in your daily practice?
Part of my role is to support more junior therapy staff with the patients who require complex manual handling, therapeutic assessment, or complex discharge planning.
Within the remits of the TED Service, I support patients with complex needs or who are at high risk of readmission within the first 72 hours of their discharge. I will follow up with these patients when they leave the hospital and help with their transition back home. This support can be in the form of assessing their transfer method and mobility in the home environment, providing or reviewing equipment such as hoists and standing aids, and providing advice and education regarding reducing risk, promoting independence and reducing deconditioning.
- What are some of the most rewarding moments or experiences in your career?
Seeing the difference the TED Service has made not only to the patients, but also their families/loved ones. Returning home following a significant change in functional ability can be very daunting for everyone involved and can sometimes come with a degree of risk. Being able to mitigate or reduce these risks and provide reassurance to help people thrive in their own environments can be very rewarding.
I love also igniting the passion for therapy in new staff and seeing staff develop and grow throughout their careers.
- One of the key shifts in the 10-Year Plan is ‘Sickness to Prevention’. How does your role as an Occupational Therapist help prevent illness or injury before they occur?
A large part of the role is around risk taking, and there are two parts to this.
Reducing risk and reducing risk of readmission into hospital. This can be in the form of falls prevention, ensuring equipment is safe and compatible in the home environment, insuring the right people are trained and educated on how to care for the induvial.
The other side of this is ‘Positive Risk Taking’. The role of an Occupational Therapist involves making judgement calls as to whether patients can safely manage at home from a functional perspective. If home is where a patient wants to be, we do everything we can to support this in a timely manner, reducing risks where we can and putting safety netting in place where possible.
- In what ways do you help people adapt their work or home environments to reduce the risk of injury?
We assess the person, the environment and the activity in unity to see how we can best optimise the individual’s potential while assessing and reducing risk.
We work to reduce risk by educating on and practicing transfer/ mobility methods and assessing the home environment for any risks or adaptation needs. We provide equipment and adaptations that can optimise potential (reducing deconditioning) as well as reduce risk for the individual and the people caring for them. We also review the individual in the home environment to see if they are safe/ if there is anything we can further do to reduce risk.
- How do you collaborate with other professionals or services to strengthen admission prevention and safe discharge pathways? Or How do you work with patients and families to build independence and resilience that reduces the need for hospital care?
We wouldn’t be able to do our jobs effectively without utilising our wonderful MDT colleagues. We liaise daily with other professionals both in the hospital and in the community setting in order to get the best outcomes for the patients we see. This may be in the form of asking for their professional advice or referring a patient on to their different services. By working collaboratively, we aim to create a safety net around the patient that help them stay safe but also helps them reach their potential.
Families play a huge part in keeping patients safe and optimised on discharge from hospital. If the patient is consenting, we do our best to get family involved right from the start. It’s often the families that know the patient best and are there to provide the in-between support that carers sometimes cannot. We work closely with these families to educate them on principles of care and rehabilitation and help them feel supported and confident to not only care for their loved one but also encourage them to live a full life.
We’ve had feedback from families about the difference it makes just having someone come out on discharge to go over the new equipment or care needs and be there to answer any questions they may have.
