Open Lecture – The Putney PDOC Toolkit: practical tools to contribute towards the assessments of patients in a PDOC
Presenters: Amy Pundole, Clinical Lead Speech & Language Therapist and Susie Wilford, Senior Occupational Therapist, Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability
The Putney PDoC toolkit is a set of practical resources to support the assessment and monitoring of patients in a Prolonged Disorder of Consciousness.
The assessment and monitoring of individuals in a prolonged disorder of consciousness is complex. As such the RHN is guided by the Royal College of Physicians National Clinical Guidelines on Prolonged Disorders of Consciousness (2013). These guidelines recommend the use of specific structured assessment tools, which are used at the RHN by experienced members of the multi-disciplinary team in the assessment of individuals in a prolonged disorder of consciousness. In addition to structured assessment tools, the RCP guidelines highlight the importance of informal assessment. It is in this context that experienced staff at the RHN have developed this resource which includes a set of non-standardised assessments developed from informal clinical tools used at the RHN by a range of disciplines to support formal assessment. The aim is to support patient centred assessment in a more flexible way and provide a practical resource for clinicians to support evaluation of behaviours in areas of uncertainty.
Areas covered include:
• 24 hour management
• arousal monitoring
• behavioural observations
• supporting appropriate interactions
• ways to assess and record object use
• assessing and monitoring command following
• assessing response to oral trials
• individual assessment plans
• further ideas for assessing emergence
• ongoing monitoring post assessment
• the use of sensory groups and individual sessions to carry out annual reviews e.g. baking and art groups.
We want to share our resources to save others reinventing the wheel, provide some consistency for assessment across settings and provide ideas that clinicians can develop further.
This resource has been developed and consolidated by staff at the RHN.
Anyone is welcome to attend the lecture but use of the tool is intended for clinical professionals only.
This lecture is free but you must register online as places are limited.