National 360 recently opened our Paediatric Clinic at our Cheltenham office.
I and my supporting Paediatric OT team members have been in frequent discussion about the benefits of having offered both a mobile and clinic-based service.
As a mobile-based service, the Paediatric OT Team began to notice that many clients would benefit from clinic-based sessions over sessions within the community either at home or school secondary to distractions further impacting concentration/attention and other variables also.
We also had discussions around the benefits of not only for the client but for our workload, meaning that with less travel we can service more clients in the day in which would also reduce wait times for those clients who may have been waiting for the service for a prolonged period of time. It was also important for us to ask our clients that we were servicing in the community what they would prefer in the long term, as currently, other clinic services can have up to a 12 month wait period.
As a team, we worked together to identify what exactly we needed to have the clinic up and running inclusive of equipment, insurance policies and safety precautions. Thanks to the input of all involved we were able to open up the clinic and start servicing clients on Wednesday the 17th of March. Since this date, more and more clients have been interested in trialling the clinic practice and seeing how their child responds and whether in long term, clinic-based sessions would be more beneficial or whether we could rotate between both community service and in-clinic service.
The first day ran smoothly with the support of customer service assisting clients with direction up to the clinic space. On the first open day, we serviced 4 clients who from observations in session benefitted immensely from the clinic space secondary to those reduced distractions you may experience in the home setting. We are excited to continue to use this space to further support our clients and further be able to offer both a clinic and community-based service!
We look forward to seeing our clients in either clinic or the community!
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Also a special thank you to my gorgeous client Eleanor and her Mother Laura, that allowed us to share these gorgeous photos from our first clinic day and session together.
By Rachel, Paediatric Occupational Therapist
