Stroke Care Teams

I have had the pleasure of speaking to many people who have been affected by stroke whether that be from people who themselves have suffered a stroke, or family members that understand the difficulties faced during rehabilitation periods to workers that have to work with stroke victims on a daily basis. I would like to share Amy Kelland's story who is an incredible care worker who rehabiltates stroke victims, and she has been kind enough to write a short testimonial detailing the types of patients she works with. If people donate to stroke organisations and help promote stroke awareness then it'll help give institutes the best equipment to ensure the best rehabilitation for all stroke patients:

I work as a domiciliary care supervisor.  In the community we have a large amount of service users who are stroke survivors.  I feel that the care staff sometimes find working with a stroke survivor as a daunting task especially when faced with someone with communication difficulties.  We have service users who cannot speak at all following a stroke.  People who cannot express what they want/ need e.g. mixing up yes and no, asking for a cup of tea when they want coffee.  This can become frustrating for both the care worker and the service user.  I encourage the staff to have patience and to actively support that person to get what they want/ need.  It can be a long, difficult road for some people.  But, I feel with the correct amount of support and time the service user can have massive benefits and improvements. 

The other big difficulty many of our stroke survivor service users face is mobility problems.  We have service users who have difficulty walking and also difficulty with fine motor skills such as doing buttons up.  We encourage our service users to do as much as they can for themselves, we help them with any tasks they find too difficult.

It is all about re-abling the person to live as much of a full life as they can after a stroke.