Symmetrisleep Lying & Positioning Workshop: Auckland

Planning for Success in 24 Hour Postural Care

Presenter: Andrew Wilson, Symmetrisleep (United Kingdom)

For many years Symmetrisleep have run Postural Care Workshops to give therapists an understanding of the issues surrounding 24‐hour Postural Care.

The workshop covers:

• Principles of postural care: Why bother and who will benefit?
• Planning for success: Setting the scene and setting goals
• How to improve cooperation with families and motivate carers
• Answering those tissue viability questions: How to offer better skin care
• Reducing the care burden and single carer working
• Temperature regulation
• Paediatric and Elderly care
• Pressure: Symmetrisleep for pressure relief over potential and existing injuries, and the importance of reduction in shear. Microclimate, pressure and skin integrity and how to combine use with an alternating mattress, with feedback from experience and literature.

This is followed by a practical, hands-on session:

• You will have the chance to work directly and experiment with the Symmetrisleep range
• Opportunity for your clientele to have their needs sounded out in a sympathetic and highly innovative atmosphere
• Practical tips for easier care
• Communication; how to introduce the equipment to families and carers, and what happens when you walk out the door?
• Positioning options for skin care

The workshop is not all about the equipment, but rather how to get the best out of it. When you have completed this workshop, you will be armed with an array of tools to help you empower family and care organisations, and maintain enthusiastic participation from them in their clients' 24 hour postural management journeys.

There will be an emphasis on positioning during the night time but also discussions involving the broader scope of 24 hour postural care in other environments and other times of the day.