Margaret Ann Alligood has been a physical therapist assistant (PTA) with ECU Health since 1996, and she is very familiar with helping patients return home safely and supporting their families during that process. Still, when her father, Frayle Woolard, fell at home and broke his femur, she got to see first-hand the compassion and comprehensive care ECU Health provides, from surgery to rehabilitation.
Woolard was admitted to ECU Health Beaufort Hospital after his fall, and over the next two weeks he was in and out of the hospital and a short-term nursing home. He ended up at ECU Health Medical Center, where he stayed for an extended period.
“He was extremely weak and had decreased endurance,” Alligood said. “But he had a strong desire to return home, and the acute therapists assigned to him recognized his recovery potential.”
The therapists’ skilled interventions made it so Woolard could transition to inpatient rehabilitation and he continued to work on his recovery.
“Your perspective changes when you’re on the family side of things,” Alligood said. “My mother is on hospice with end-stage Alzheimer’s, and my brother and family and I manage the hospice team and caregivers to be sure she has supervision all day. With my father in the hospital, it was a very stressful time, but the rehab therapists who worked with my father were incredible. They motivated him to keep going, celebrated his successes and helped reduce so much of the stress I felt. Knowing he was receiving excellent care meant everything to us, and they helped our family achieve the goal of getting my father back home.”
Woolard is now able to get up and around with some support and he is doing many of the things he enjoys, including going to church and spending time with his wife.
Source: www.ecuhealth.org
