Physiotherapists from across the Pacific are gaining confidence in treating burns, hand injuries and providing basic speech therapy to children with cleft palates thanks to ongoing training from Interplast volunteers.
In mid-August physiotherapists Jenny Ball and Gillian Webb, and speech pathologist Melissa Parkin, travelled to Suva in Fiji to provide a week of training for a group of 21 physiotherapy students and practising physiotherapists from across the Pacific. This was the second year that Interplast has delivered this workshop in partnership with the Fiji National University, as part of their fourth-year physiotherapy training.
Jenny said the training was very important for helping physiotherapists to understand the range of issues that they can deal with, particularly when they will often be based in remote areas where there are no specialised health professionals.
“One of the main aims is to make sure the physiotherapy staff see this as a normal part of their work in the same way that they would treat a broken leg,” said Jenny. “We’ve got to normalise it.”
Jenny used the example of treating burns to illustrate how training physiotherapists contributes to Interplast’s broader surgical work.
“In the Pacific region a lot of people are burnt because they use kerosene lamps for lighting their houses and they use kerosene for cooking,” she said. “What the surgeons in Suva are finding is that patients are presenting down the track with a lot of contractures.
