Transcription:
Bridging the Gap Between Rehab and Home with Recreation Therapy

Melanie Cole (Host): Attitude and activity strongly affect a person’s health and wellbeing, however, for someone with a disability, it is not only desirable, it’s imperative. My guest today is Cecilia Rider. She’s the Recreational Therapy Associate Manager at Shepherd Center. Cecilia, what is recreational therapy and how does it specifically benefit someone with a disability?

Cecilia Rider, MD, CTRS (Guest): Well recreational therapy is providing people with an opportunity to get back to activities that they may have done prior to their injury. So, it could be someone who has had an illness, it could be someone who has a sudden disability, it could be someone was born with a disability. But it is showing them to participate in those leisure and recreation activities. In the rehab environment, we use that as a way for them to also address their other therapy goals. So, ways for them to stay active, ways for them to do things that they enjoyed doing that are going to help them get stronger and then also, helping them to stay connected with their family, with their community to get out and do those activities that they enjoyed doing before, that helped really define them as an individual.

Host: Who can participate in recreational therapy at Shepherd Center?

Cecilia: All of our patients actually get a referral to a recreation therapist. So, anyone across the continuum from the minute they are admitted all the way through like outpatient and even community members can come back and participate in our community activities.

Host: And what kind of activities are we talking about today? What are available for people with disabilities through Shepherd?

Cecilia: Well, for inpatients it starts with just leisure counseling like you said, what activities are available to you. What did you like to do before, what can you continue doing? And then introducing them to the different adaptive equipment, the different resources in their community where they can do those activities. For our outpatients, for our community members that come back and participate in activities, it really is a lot of different health and wellness and sports and outdoor types of activities. So, just as an example, coming up in April, we have a bird watching retreat and they are actually going to go overnight to a state park here in Georgia and it’s for community members. It’s not patients from the hospital. It’s not necessarily even former Shepherd patients. It’s just anyone in the community that’s interested in bird watching and feels like they need some kind of adaptation or accommodation to do that.

So, they are doing that for an overnight trip in April. In May we have Adventure Skills Workshop where we literally take all of our equipment and all of our staff and we go to a camp that’s on a lake in Alabama. We go for three days and we participate in everything from like poolside activities whether it’s swimming, whether it’s innertube water polo, we also do scuba in the poll because the visibility is great. We have lakeside activities which could be jet skiing, water skiing, tubing, canoe, kayak and then we have all sorts of other just type of really, I guess adventure based is what people would call them, like target shooting, skeet shooting, climbing. There’s a confidence course it is like a ropes course for people. We also do different sports throughout the weekend so basketball, tennis, wheelchair rugby, those types of activities. But the idea is to give people an example of the equipment that they would need or how they could modify whatever they are doing so that they can still participate in the activity despite any type of mobility issue that they might be having.

Host: How cool is that. Those sound like wonderful programs. So, along those lines, attitude and activity as I said in the intro really can affect a person’s health and mental wellbeing. Tell us how – what you’ve seen as far as self-esteem and mental health of people with disabilities that participate in these kinds of activities.

Cecilia: Well, in the research that we have done, as far as inpatients; when patients participate in more recreation therapy during their rehab, they are actually better adjusted when they go home and by that, I mean, that they are more likely to return to work and school because they have actually been out in the community. They’ve seen how things are accessible. They have seen how they can problem solve through things. They know how to access their community transportation.

So, it removes a lot of those fears and anxieties that might go into that and then also, they’ve had the experience to build their confidence. So, they know that when they go home, that they are able to participate in a sports activity, they are able to continue volunteering at their child’s school. Because they know exactly how to take care of themselves. They know how to navigate the community with whatever mobility device that they are using. So, taking them from all of those activities in inpatient builds that confidence, shows them how to translate the therapy skills that they are doing and whether it’s physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, things they are working on with nursing or counseling.

They can then translate those into the community and it really builds their confidence and the research has also shown us that those people that do more recreation therapy while they are in rehab; are better off in terms of their health and wellbeing once they are at home. They are not hospitalized as often. They have fewer skin sores. And whether that’s related to the fact that they are actually able to stay active or whether that’s related to them just learning the things they needed to do to translate therapy skills to their home environment. we are not sure of what that connection is. But people learn the things they need to learn in a real life setting versus if you just did things in the hospital never translated it to your transferring into a car, you’re staying in a hotel, you’re flying on a plane, you’re going to an amusement park, all of those types of things; then they just tend to feel like they can’t do it. And so, it’s building up that confidence and really showing people what they can do.

Host: Right along those lines of what people can do, I’m always amazed when I see things like the Paralympics. What about participation in sports? Tell us what kinds of adaptations are available for sports participation and speak a little bit about competitive athletics and how this is woven into the program for the incredibly motivated person with disabilities.

Cecilia:   Okay. Absolutely. Yeah, so Shepherd sponsors I believe it’s 12 different adaptive sports teams. So, we have community members that are coming in from some as far as two and three hours away because they don’t have a sports group in their area. So, they’re participating in wheelchair tennis which is our newest teams. We also have teams for target shooting. We have teams for adapted like track activities so racing. We have a cycling team. We have a basketball, wheelchair basketball. We have power soccer. We have wheelchair rugby and so because Shepherd sponsors those different teams; our patients have the opportunity to go down and actually see an athlete practicing.

Or we do tournaments here. So, we have teams that come from all over the southeast and the patients can go down, meet the athletes. They can watch the tournament. They can see people that look like them actually participating in activities that right now, they can’t even imagine them being able to do.

So, we offer different clinics also through our community like health and wellness programs where we give people an opportunity whether the try the equipment and thought I really liked this but I’m not sure how this fits into my lifestyle or whether they never had an opportunity because of their medical status to try something while they were inpatient. They can come back, participate in one of the community clinics, get in touch with our athletes and we do clinics four hand cycling, we do clinics for kayaking.

We do clinics for golf. We’ve had tennis. We do actually a paratriathlon that we do a clinic for in July and the first day is just fitting people to equipment. So, getting in a wheelchair racing chair. Getting in a wheelchair or a hand cycle or recumbent tricycle depending on what the needs of the participant are. And then also getting into the pool and learning how to swim and do laps and that type of thing. That’s the first day, it is just learning that, getting fitted for equipment.

The second day they actually do a mini paratriathlon where they are participating in all three events, back to back and we have athletes that come out from our different teams. We partner with the Atlanta Tri Club and they have athletes that are routinely participating in triathlons at that Paralympic level and they are able to come out and show people actually what they can do.

So, it’s getting people tied in even from the inpatient side. What do you see people doing that’s interesting to you? It’s getting them in the equipment and then we offer the community health and wellness events to allow people to try things and then also it’s tying them into their local community. So, if you are not from here, but let’s say you are from Charlotte; being able to connect them with the wheelchair rugby team that plays in the Charlotte area so that when they go home, they can start even just practicing recreationally with that team and build themselves up if it is something they really wanted to get into competitively.

Host: Is the equipment just unbelievable? The things that are available now when you spoke about wheelchair races and tennis and how are the patients adapting to all of this technology and using it to compete in these sports? Does it take a big learning curve to learn to use this type of equipment?

Cecilia: It’s actually phenomenal the advances that we’ve had in technology like when we look back 20 years at what sports equipment looked like and then we look now at what that same sports equipment would look like; it’s insane to look at how much lighter the equipment is because of the material that it’s made out of, how much more streamlined things are. Because people are taking their knowledge for other types of activities, so whether it’s skydiving or whether it’s water sports and they are looking at the aerodynamics of different things and they can then adapt wheelchair type sports and equipment to that type of technology.

So, for our patients to get into like an all court chair which they might use for tennis or they might use for basketball; that type of equipment has a different camber on the wheels, it tuns faster and it moves more fluid with their body movements. So, it’s actually easier sometimes for people to learn. Some sports like wheelchair racing, the equipment is a little bit cumbersome and it’s awkward. So, some people get in the equipment and they are like this sport is not going to be for me. And other people get in the equipment and they push it a little bit and they think maybe I can try this, I really like running before. I really liked competing in track events before. Let me just give this a shot and work a little harder and then they get accustomed to the equipment.

So, it really can work different ways depending on what the sport is and just how familiar or how completely different the equipment feels.

Host: I love that and you’re right, in the last 20 years the technology is incredible. As we wrap up, tell us a little bit about your health and wellness clinics and how these events can help your participants bridge what they’ve learned in rehab and in recreational therapy to their own community and even transitioning back to an independent lifestyle.

Cecilia: Sure, so like I said with the health and wellness events, we are trying to take things that maybe they didn’t have an opportunity to do into their community settings. So, those clinics typically aren’t held here at the Shepherd Center. A lot of them are even held outside of the Atlanta area. So, in June, we are doing a health and wellness clinic for kayaking and cycling. We are doing that in East Ridge, Tennessee. And we are partnering with the city of Chattanooga there so that we can tie people into their local community.

The same thing happens with different health and wellness clinics that we are doing throughout the area. So, we are working with the YMCA for the paratriathlon. So, again it’s tying people into what are their community resources? Because we have equipment here at Shepherd and they’re welcome to check out different sports equipment if they wanted to take a hand cycle for a weekend, if they wanted to come and practice with the tennis team or the basketball team like we have stock equipment that they can try, to try out that sport. But if they’re not from this area, we want to get them tied into what their local resources are.

So, sometimes people are driving for a couple of hours to come and participate in the clinic, find out that they like the equipment and then we are giving them the resources, partnering with Kelly Brush Foundation so that they can then go and possibly get a grant to get a piece of equipment for themselves where they are not having to travel any type of distance to get it. they have got it right there at home. We are tying them into what those local resources are so that they can go out and use their local parks department in Tennessee so that they can go hand cycling, or they know where the accessible kayaking site is and really get them back away from like you can only do these activities at Shepherd so you can do these in your community. Here’s how you get tied into the equipment, here’s how you get tied into those community resources.

Host: Do you have any last bit of information or advice that you’d like people to know about recreational therapy and the importance for people with disabilities to participate in these things so that they can feel a part of the community and independent?

Cecilia: I think just reminding people that like really the sky is the limit. If you enjoyed doing something before; there’s a way to help you do that activity again. And if there’s something that you enjoyed doing before that you really don’t want to do because it’s doing it differently; then there is something that’s going to give you that same benefit. So, keeping an open mind and exploring those opportunities and just knowing that there are people there that have done it. It’s not reinventing the wheel. And if there is something you’re interested in, there’s a resource or there is someone that we can tap into that’s going to help you get back into that activity. Because a lot of times, we use our recreation and leisure to define who we are. I’m a swimmer. I’m a cycler. I play golf. Whatever those things are; we want people to continue to have that as a part of their identity and not lose that just because they’ve had some type of setback or they have a disability and they are not functioning in the same way they did before.

Host: One hundred percent and absolutely wonderful. It’s a great program that you’ve got going at Shepherd Center and thank you so much Cecilia for coming on and telling us about the adventure skills workshops and the health and wellness clinics and all of the exciting things that you are doing in recreational therapy at the Shepherd Center. You’re listening to Shepherd Center Radio. For more information on resources available through recreational therapy at Shepherd Center, please go to www.shepherd.org. that’s www.shepherd.org. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for tuning in.