Departments

Care of the Elderly Service (Physiotherapy)

Physiotherapists working in Care of the Elderly services provide assessment and treatment to patients in a range of different settings.

Frailty is a major theme throughout all our work in trying to identify improved care and different

Models of Care to facilitate early discharge of frail older patients and, the development of the

Frailty Intervention Therapy team on the acute floor is an example of this work.  In 2015 this multi-disciplinary team commenced work in the Emergency Department (ED) and we aim to assess all patients over 75 years of age who present to the ED during our core working hours for Frailty, initiate therapy assessments as required and commence discharge planning.

In Beaumont Hospital we have two 35 bedded specialist geriatric wards and one offsite 20 bedded ward, St.Joseph’s Rehabilitation Unit in Raheny.  All these patients are under the care of our four Geriatricians. These wards provide multi-disciplinary rehabilitation and complex discharge planning for older adults.  On the grounds of the St. Joseph’s Campus there is a 100 bedded residential community nursing unit.  We aim to provide assessment to new patients, routine manual handling assessments and rehabilitation for patients as required.

Additionally in Beaumont there is a dedicated Stroke service which is also under the governance of the Department of Geriatric and Stroke Medicine. We provide multi-disciplinary assesment and rehabilitation for Stroke patients of all age.

In relation to our out-patient services, we have a day hospital service on the St. Josephs campus. The service provides Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment for new patients to the Consultant clinics and review of the return patients to the clinic as required. Additionally the consultants referred patients for MDT assessments and rehabilitation from their out-patient clinics