National Spinal Injury Centre at Stoke Mandeville awarded £300k grant
Stoke Mandeville Hospital's National Spinal Injury Centre given a £300k grant over five years
Last updated 25th Nov 2023
The National Spinal Injury Unit (NSIC) at Stoke Mandeville Hospital received a £300k grant to contribute to international research into rehabilitation for spinal injury patients.
The investment will rollout over the course of five years, allowing the Centre to collate data from a focus group.
The Centre, which forms part of the Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, will be looking into length of stay, care provided, and patients and loved ones' feedback.
"We would very much hope that this is the beginning of a long term research partnership..."
Doctor Jane Duff, NSIC Head of Psychology, said: "We are privileged to be partnering with leaders across the world, they do a lot more research than we do so for them to have asked us is fabulous."
"We would very much hope that this is the beginning of a long term research partnership and really helping us look at our data within the English system influencing the other seven spinal cord injury centres that are within NHS England."
A handful of other spinal injury centres across the world, in the US, Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden and Canada, were chosen to partake in the research and data collection to create a cross-country approach to patient rehabilitation.
The research is funded by a $4.2 million grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research made to Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago.
The idea is to analyse how patients are being treated and how they recover in the various chosen centres, to analyse what approach works best at an affordable cost to hospitals and patients, and to evaluate if a middle ground approach could benefit all in the quality of care.
"It could be that rehabilitation is too long, and it could be that the US is too short, but it could be that there is a middle point..."
Dr Duff said: "It's to see what patients who have just come out of rehabilitation consider their needs are and to be, over that five year period."
"Consider family members and how well they think their loved ones are being prepared for discharge from hospital and transitioning to the community, where the gaps might be."
"It could be that rehabilitation is too long, and it could be that the US is too short, but it could be that there is a middle point where people can get the most out of being in hospital but also not stay too long to perhaps become institutionalised."
The NSIC is already a leading centre in the UK, with a full approach to treating patients.
"...it's really looking at a whole range of psychosocial variables, quality of life variables, for people with injuries."
Dr Duff said: "Why the grant awarding body was particularly interested is because the length of stay for people who have a spinal cord injury in the United States has become very short, so they wanted to partner with other nations that have similar types of spinal cord injury rehabilitation but have much longer lengths of stay and compare the rehabilitation outcome."
"It's also looking at the amount of therapy time people get during the day, we are also looking at other factors in terms of sleep, so it's really looking at a whole range of psychosocial variables, quality of life variables, for people with injuries."
The unit provides patients the opportunity to take part in sports, such as wheelchair table tennis or basketball, have a go at gardening in an in-built courtyard, and offers them a range of supervised physiotherapy activities.
The courtyard itself is built with a variety of ground surfaces to enable patients, new to using a wheelchair, to adapt to uneven grounds and get ready for life outside of the hospital, which comes with a range of obstacles.
The investigations will also include a survey on therapy received during rehabilitation, which varies greatly across the world, and how well inpatients are prepared for the transition back home after a life changing injury.
The outcomes from this work will have a significant impact on future rehabilitation provided by the NSIC and enable the service to be more effective, as well as enhance people’s quality of life after spinal cord injury.