I’ve been assessing clients alongside Occupational Therapists for many years now and find nothing more satisfying and interesting. I get to meet some truly incredible people and love hearing about their lives. Today I met a lovely lady whilst on a Dementia Ward. The case notes detailed many things and highlighted the fact it would be unlikely to get a lot of feedback from the client herself. This is a sad but common situation, where the client has spent a considerable amount of time in bed due to a suitable seating solution not being available. Despite this, I started with a relatively simple specialist chair and found that it met the client’s postural needs very well. The carers were taking very good care of her and mentioned that she was a fan of Neil Diamond. Even though I’ve been known to do an injustice to many of his songs over the years on karaoke, I started to search his top 10 best songs. The playlist came up and I decided to play some of Neil Diamonds songs on the laptop whilst the lady had time to try the chair. The reaction was incredible! For the first 30 minutes of the assessment we had seen little emotional reaction, yet the second the music came on we saw the biggest smile, hands waiving from side to side and her feet began to tap along in time, tune after tune. Our client started to mouth words as the songs played and it was impossible for us all not to have a tear in our eye and needless to say, we didn’t want the assessment to come to an end.
This experience was a first for me. I’m a big believer in Sensory Equipment including Reminiscence Rooms, but I have never used music for a seating assessment before. It goes without saying that this will be an inclusion in our future assessments, where it benefits the client.
I look forward to seeing what tomorrow’s seating assessments bring. If you require a seating assessment or have someone you feel would benefit from one, please reach out and we would love to help. We always give a free quotation on the same day and leave the it for the customer to come back to us if they wish to proceed. You won’t find us chasing up quotations or using any selling tactics, we believe in providing an upfront, honest service that our customers deserve.
Thanks for reading,
Shaun s