Traditionally, in-person supervised rehabilitation has been the standard of care following total knee arthroplasty (TKA) in order to optimize surgical outcomes (Davilla et al; 2019).
During pandemic restrictions, our ability to offer in person postoperative treatment to our patients after knee replacement at the Holland Centre, was significantly impacted. Thus, quick adaptation was needed in order to expand our rehabilitation services and provide reliable access to care. Technology such as the Zoom platform provided us with an opportunity to be innovative and deliver quality care to our patients within the comfort of their home, while keeping them safe. Recent studies indicate that virtual treatment is not inferior to those that involve face-to-face interactions (Tanaka et al; 2020).
Although virtual rehab was becoming a standard of care, it also had its own unique challenges that patients and the rehabilitation team were confronting. We needed a clear understanding of effectiveness of this format, barriers to virtual rehab and mitigation strategies to meet our patient needs, optimize delivery and continuity of care.
Therefore, a virtual rehab experience survey was developed based on former patients, patient partners and staff feedback to better understand patient’ perspective and effectiveness of our virtual care. As a result, with the help of our collaborators a couple of instructional videos were created to better prepare patients after knee replacement for the virtual rehab classes and optimize their exercise sessions.
In addition, virtual rehab delivery guidelines were streamlined to ensure consistency among staff and successful care delivery.
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