Patients positive about ESD team

It’s been a year since the Early Supported Discharge (ESD) Team for Stroke began in the north of Wiltshire.

The initiative was set up a year ago with the goal of supporting stroke patients out of hospital quickly and giving intense rehab for up to the first 6 weeks of getting home.

The small community based ESD team based at Chippenham Community Hospital is made up of a physiotherapist, occupational therapist, speech therapist, dietician and two rehab support workers.

It has been an exciting journey for us starting up this new service and also very rewarding to witness the positive outcomes as patients begin to recover.   One of the benefits we’ve found is that we are able to offer a really integrated approach to rehabilitation, at times including aspects of all the 4 therapies in one intervention.  We are also able to offer an intense programme of rehab supporting patients at the beginning of a very complex journey where high levels of repetition in therapy can be key to recovery.

Patient feedback has been really positive:

“Keep doing what you’re doing, I was really worried about caring for my husband at home but I think he has got better much faster in his own home with the ESD Team than if he’d stayed in hospital.”

“The ESD Team have been amazing. I was especially impressed with their ability to respond to my husband’s personal preferences towards practical activities by adapting their visits to help building benches!”

“The whole experience has been fantastic, turning a very traumatic stroke into 6 weeks of gentle but extremely productive rehab.”