Linda Dees
The Joint School is to get patients aware of what’s going to happen on the day of their operation and their pathway through. They come to the Joint School about a month before they’re having their operation and we go through exercises and a pathway about how long they’re going to be in hospital what we expect of them when they come in, what to bring in, and do exercises and things like that.
I’m the Co-ordinator of the Joint School, I’m the first person that they see when they come into the Joint School and I give them all their paperwork and I get the paperwork back at the end of the session. But I do explain everything to them, what’s going to happen on that morning and go through it all with them, and then I do the exercises as well to show the patients what they’re going to do.
The patients are more aware of what’s going to happen. The stay of the patient is greatly reduced; when I first started here it used to be 14 days, but now it’s down to either 3 or 4, hoping everything goes well and they go home then.
We’ve got good feedback from the Joint School, how well it has worked and how well it’s run, which is nice, so that we know we’re doing a good job for the patients.