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Pregnancy and postnatal hydrotherapy

Posted By lionhe44

"Pregnancy and postnatal hydrotherapy"

About: Fiona Stanley Hospital / State Rehabilitation Service Outpatients Clinics

(as a service user),

It was challenging for me to attend the antenatal hydrotherapy service at FSH due to:

1) the limited sessions offered
- only 1 session per week
-  on weekday morning 

This was difficult as I was working full-time.

2) it clashed with the multi disciplinary diabetes in pregnancy antenatal clinics on a Friday. I was unable to switch to the DIP clinic for a different day. The DIP clinics were busy and I had to wait to be seen by various multi disc professionals- it seemed there was not much the staff could do to facilitate me attending the hydrotherapy sessions. 

I only managed to attend 1 session prior to delivery and I found the session highly beneficial in terms of the guidance and variation of exercises led by the physiotherapist. This facilitated reduced pain/ strain during exercise and also for my emotional well-being. This class was also pretty full which impacted on the types of exercises that could be conducted.

Suggestions based on my experience:

1) more antenatal hydrotherapy sessions across the week with some late afternoon sessions.

2) more sessions with cap on no participants.

3) alter timing of antenatal  hydrotherapy sessions and antenatal clinics to avoid clashes. Exercise is important in pregnancy especially for women with GDM.

4) start offering post natal hydrotherapy to complement women attending 1:1 obs pelvic health physio.

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Responses

Response from Neil Doverty, Executive Director Fiona Stanley and Fremantle Hospitals Group, South Metropolitan Health Service nearly 2 years ago
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Neil Doverty
Executive Director Fiona Stanley and Fremantle Hospitals Group,
South Metropolitan Health Service

Submitted on 15/06/2022 at 10:00 AM
Published on Care Opinion at 12:06 PM

picture of Neil Doverty

Dear lionhe44,

Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback related to the valuable pre and postnatal hydrotherapy service. We have had lots of positive feedback related to this service but are aware that opportunities for participation are currently very limited. The main barrier to offering greater classes and flexibility is access to the pool and staff availability. In recognition of the limited number of classes we have chosen to not cap the number of participants however appreciate that on occasion this has resulted in having larger than ideal numbers (the most we have had was 17).

Thank you also for raising the clash in time with the Diabetes in Pregnancy (DIP) class as this had not been identified previously. This feedback has now been passed on to the team and they will look to see if there is another time both staff and the pool can be accessed to offer increased opportunities for attendance.

We are also aware of the increasing demand for this service and are working toward a greater number of sessions being available in the future, however, in the interim the team have developed an exercise handout to provide to patients so they can replicate the exercises at their local pool. We will ensure this is provided more proactively in the future.

Thank you again for raising these issues and providing feedback related to the value of this service for future patients.

Kind regards,

Neil Doverty

Group Executive Director

Fiona Stanley Fremantle Hospitals Group

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