Aivoliitto

In one of my previous posts I briefly mentioned one of the activities in a rehabilitation course, but I realised I haven’t introduced you to my clinic so I’ll do that now. As well as participating in an Erasmus, I’m actually doing an internship at the same time. My internship is at a neurological care centre called “Aivoliitto” on the island of Hirvensalo and the blue dot represents Aivoliitto. 

This particular practice works with neurological patients including those who have had cerebral infarctions or haemorrhages (strokes), those with multiple sclerosis (MS), Parkinson’s disease (PD) and children with neurological conditions. My position within the practice is in the stroke and MS. We do individual physiotherapy consultations, group sessions and also run week long courses that involve movement improvement, speech improvement and even relationship improvement between couples.

At the moment, my main roles include general physiotherapeutic sessions assisting the weekly courses and teaching hydrotherapy classes. Hydrotherapy classes involve various movements and activities in the pool to facilitate movement as well remove gravity, which can be a limiting factor for patients with hemiplegia (weakness on one side of their body). By changing the environment in such a way is able to eliminate/ reduce fear in the patient, which can be a massive limiting factor for the patient. Here’s a link with an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEG5_3VWFOU&t=218s

I will go into more detail about my experiences at the clinic in future posts, so subscribe and keep reading!