Reviewing spasticity management for people with neurological conditions

What is muscle spasticity?

Spasticity refers to feelings of stiffness and a wide range of involuntary muscle spasms (ongoing muscle contractions or sudden movements).

Brief description of project

Some patients with neurological conditions (nerves or nervous system) experience muscle spasticity: interventions include injecting botulinum toxin (botox) into the muscles as well as therapy support and guidance which take place in a spasticity management clinic. Currently patients who need spasticity management appointments, are seen by a consultant. Sometimes patients are also seen by an occupational therapist or a physiotherapist.

We are reviewing how these clinic appointments are run, and an area we are considering is for a physiotherapist with a specialist understanding of spasticity and movement to join the clinic. We are running a six-month trial to see if having both a consultant and a specialist physiotherapist working together in clinic will lead to an improvement in care.

Who did we speak to?

There will be approximately 72 patients seen across the trial and we spoke to 70 patients.

What and how did we ask?

We asked people to share their thoughts and experiences of using the spasticity clinic during the trial. Including whether patients feel having a specialist physiotherapist together with the doctor in clinic is working well as well as their ideas of what could make it better. We will did this using one-to-one telephone interviews and an online survey.

If you would like to know more you can view our engagement report below

View the spasticity engagement report (Microsoft word version

How can you help?

There are a number of ways you can help support this piece of work.

If you have been seen in the spasticity clinic as part of the trial, you can complete our survey online by clicking the button below.

Share your feedback

If you’d prefer a paper copy of the survey, or in a different format, or a telephone interview, please get in touch on the contact Helen Butters on [email protected] or 0113 221 7777.

What will we do?

All the feedback we receive will be considered. We will analyse and theme the responses and write an engagement report that will outline the findings and provide recommendations to the commissioning team.

The report will be published on this website and also will be sent to anyone who left shared their contact details in the survey.

If you would like to read more information about this engagement please see the downloads section below.

If you have any questions about this engagement please contact Helen Butters at [email protected] or 0113 221 7777

Downloads

Find out more about this project by exploring the documents below. The links will take you to an online version of the document. You can download copies of these documents there:

• Involvement plan
• Patient information and survey