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Stroke Rehabilitation Unit, Bristol General Hospital

Since September I have been attending, on a weekly basis, the Stroke Rehabilitation Unit in Bristol General Hospital. After a stroke it is common to lose the ability to use one side of the body, depending on the side of the brain that is affected, and for many people, a stroke can also have devastating effects regarding memory and speech. During my weeks at the hospital I spent time with many patients and used various techniques in the hope to stimulate and ultimately regain the use of the parts of the body that were badly affected by the stroke. Art therapy played a significant role in the rehabilitation, and we often manipulated clay, paper mache, and other materials to design masks, and models, used to represent the emotions of many of the patients. We also used musical instruments and the Nintendo Wii to promote limb movement and this helped many of the patients to regain the use of immobile limbs and aid their recovery. With a strong desire to enter into the medical profession I saw my visits to the hospital as a chance to really experience hospital life, and quickly discovered working at Bristol General Hospital to be much more than that. I discovered that to work in an atmosphere in which there are so many different emotions, and such a variety of people, a mutual feeling of hope will always remain, and I found this to be an extremely rewarding experience. It greatly aided my interpersonal skills as I was given the opportunity to constantly interact with a variety of age groups, in very different stages of recovery, I also learnt how to sensitively approach and relate to people of very ill health, skills that would no doubt help the majority of people in later life, whether they wish to pursue a career in medicine or not. The project not only helped encourage the victims to regain their emotional and physical strength, but also aided the families of the sufferers, who too suffer greatly with the hospitalization and illness of a loved one but are often forgotten. All in all, visiting Bristol General Hospital was a truly amazing experience.

Jess Trounce

*****

For my Clifton in the Community I and three other pupils from Clifton with a desire to go into medicine, became part of the Bristol General Hospital’s stroke rehabilitation unit. Every Monday the Clifton college group and some patients would join the activities room in the hospital. The purpose of the activities room is to get the stroke patients to express themselves through various activities; the main activity that is focused on is art.

On our very first day at the Hospital Pete the activities co-ordinator set us a task of getting creative and to mould a clay mask of ourselves. The catch however was that the mask had to express the feelings we felt, as we walked through the activities room door. After we had finished our arduous task, some with greater ease than others, Pete showed us masks created by the stroke patients. I was taken aback at first by some of the masks we saw. One mask in particular did not look remotely like a face, it was disfigured and completely lacked order. After talking to Pete we learned how Stroke patients can lose all bodily proprioception. A stroke obliterates the awareness of certain body parts, but only the parts that have been affected by the stroke, that is why it is important for the patients to actively get involved in artist activities. An exercise that further portrayed the loss of proprioception to us was the body model; this was a paper model of a human body cut up into the main torso and the limbs. The task for the stroke patient was to piece the limbs back onto the body in the correct place. What astounded me were the pictures of the attempts of a particular stroke patient; the result was nothing that resembled a human body, arms were placed where the head should be. What is absolutely fascinating is that the link between what the patient sees and applying this to the model was missing or confused, as a result of his particular stroke.

Another task we helped with was the design of “The Angel”. Unfortunately the Bristol General Hospital is to be closed down in the coming new year, as a memoir of the hospital we had the task of creating something that would represent what the hospital has done and how it will be remembered. When we had put all our brain power together and pooled all our ideas, we came up with a design for a faceless angel. The angel is symbolic of the caring attitude in the hospital; the angel will also be holding an empty box. The box will be covered with pictures of all the past patients that have come through the stroke ward and is a symbol of how the hospital is like an eternal gift. I felt pleasure to be part of the project, watching the angel taking shape created a great sense of achievement and team work.

Interacting with the patients of the BGH and participating in simple tasks, was a very rewarding experience. We learned how to approach different people and I enjoyed meeting so many new characters. Although sometimes it felt like the patients were making no progress, just being able to brighten someone’s day is very satisfying and gives a huge feeling of self worth. I would highly recommend volunteering at the Bristol general Hospital, the atmosphere is always lively and humorous and you quickly feel part of the hospitals community.

Sophie Morgan

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