Emma's story

Hello my name is Emma and I’ve worked in the NHS for nearly 20 years.

I’ve worked in many different areas in the NHS, however the last four years I have been working as an occupational therapist within the wheelchair service covering the whole of Suffolk. The job is interesting, challenging and always different. I travel around the whole community, going into people’s houses, ensuring that people in wheelchairs can carry out their daily tasks as best as possible within the comfort of their own home. 

When the COVID pandemic began, we all worked hard to identify the patients that needed our input to prevent hospital admission and to ensure that our service continued to work throughout lockdown. Everything seemed up in the air at the beginning of the pandemic and some members of staff having to shield, we had to be flexible and knew that we may have to help other teams. 

I was deployed to work for the community assessment beds team, supporting patients with fractures at our Glastonbury Court site. This was a real challenge for me as it was something different to what I had been doing for the last four years but we all got stuck in together and got on with doing the best job we could given the situation.  any of the team were deployed to work in the Skyliner centre which changed its use to help support additional community equipment provision, as a wheelchair service we helped the community teams as much as we could knowing that the restrictions meant many of our patients had to wait for the rules to change before they could be seen again. 

We are working harder than ever catching up with all of the patients who we were not able to see because of COVID-19. As a team, we are working tirelessly to get everyone seated and more comfortable so they can be as independent as possible. It’s such a gratifying job; we develop great relationships with our patients and can help transform their lives for the better.