The Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Program

The Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) Rehabilitation Program provides tertiary inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation services to persons with traumatic and non-traumatic SCI for Southern Alberta and Southeastern British Columbia.

The outpatient rehabilitation SCI clinic offers consultation services for people with spinal cord injuries.  This clinic held 274 physician-patient visits, 392 physician-patient phone call follow-ups, 18 nurse or nurse practitioner visits, and 151 nurse or nurse practitioner phone call follow-up visits (for a total of 835 patient encounters) between July 1, 2021 and June 30, 2022.  During the same period, 76 patients were discharged from acute inpatient rehabilitation on the Tertiary Neuro Rehabilitation (TNR) Unit 58.  SCI discharge volumes increased in 2021-2022 by 42% compared to previous year thought to reflect pre-pandemic SCI discharge volumes.

Highlights

Between July 1 2021 and June 30 2022, Dr. Charbonneau has been involved in various research activities, particularly within the CONCENTRIC project.  She is a member of the Steering Committee which meets weekly (since April 2019).  She chaired the SCI Education Committee (September 2020 – March 2021) involved in organizing the first Annual SCI Education Day for the project.  Over 200 participants attended from across the province.  She led the process of designing and obtaining response to professional needs assessment to assess the education needs of SCI care providers in the province of Alberta.  She also participated in various capacities as a member and representative of the Steering Committee in the Concept Design Working Group, Evaluation WG and the Tool Development WG (June 8 2022 to present).  Output include the generation of recommendations strategic to a successful transitions in care model for persons with SCI and identification and prioritization of evaluation tools relevant for persons with SCI.  Since June 8 2022 and currently ongoing, she is involved in the pioneering efforts to develop an evaluation tool for exploring the care and support persons with SCI receive after discharge back into the community that is validated with the SCI community. 

The SCI team was also involved in the SCIIEQCC, a national consortium looking to improved bladder management following SCI.  The goal of this study was to improve UTI care and bladder health experienced by people with SCI across Alberta. This project was developed in response to calls from people with lived experiences of SCI, for more attention to be paid to bladder health concerns in the community. The objective of this study was to gain an in-depth understanding of bladder management experiences of people with SCI in Alberta communities, with a special focus on how UTIs are detected and managed in the community. Using a mixed methods study design, our team incorporated qualitative and quantitative data sources through one-on-one interviews and surveys, respectively. We engaged 19 interview participants and 39 survey respondents.

Preliminary findings of this work were shared in a webinar presentation hosted by SCI Alberta in the Alberta SCI Interactive Learning Series (SCILS). Findings will be disseminated back to participants and made widely available to the public through our community-based partner organizations. Findings may also be useful to share with inpatient healthcare providers, discharge planning services, and SCNs/PCNs to support collaboration between inpatient and community-based providers for people’s bladder needs. Lastly, advocacy at a policy level should be considered, to support increased funding of bladder supplies (in quantity and quality) necessary for the day-to-day management of people’s bladders.

Members

Dr. Rebecca Charbonneau, Dr. Denise Hill, Dr. Dan McGowan, Raj Parmar (Nurse Practitioner), Dr. Jennifer Litzenberger