Blue Stone Therapy begins treating residents at Parkview Care Center

FAIRFIELD — Parkview Care Center in Fairfield has expanded therapy services to its residents by contracting with Blue Stone Therapy to provide specialized care.

Blue Stone Therapy began providing services to Parkview Care Center and The Oaks Assisted Living residents on April 3, and has been helping residents with fall prevention, balance loss, memory care programming, stroke recovery and post-surgical rehabilitation.

Parkview Care Center Administrator Sarah Flattery referred to Blue Stone Therapy as the “leading specialist in older adult rehabilitation services,” and that Parkview Care Center looks forward to providing enriching programs of service that “not only apply to the needs of our residents, but develop capabilities and wholeness of life.”

Ashley Brownlee is the rehabilitation director for Blue Stone Therapy’s clinic at Parkview. She’s a certified occupational therapy assistant. Also on the team is Shawn Graves, a physical therapist. Brownlee and Graves said elderly residents can require both occupational and physical therapy, and explained the difference between them.

Brownlee said a good rule of thumb is that physical therapy refers to gross motor strength, and usually the lower body. Physical therapists work with their patients on getting up and down from a chair, walking, or using a staircase. Occupational therapy is more about fine motor skills, and often focuses on the upper body. Brownlee said it can include fine motor tasks such as getting dressed or brushing teeth.

Graves used a baseball analogy to understand the distinction.

“A physical therapist would be your strength coach, while an occupational therapist would be your pitching coach, teaching you the finer, nuanced movements,” he said.

Brownlee said Blue Stone Therapy also offers speech therapy to Parkview residents, and that includes not just work with a person’s speech but any problem associated with the muscles in their neck and head. It includes working on a person’s ability to eat or swallow.

Graves said speech therapists also do a fair amount of cognitive therapy, improving a person’s memory or helping them cope with memory loss.

A new program that Blue Stone Therapy will be rolling out soon is called “Head, Heart and Hands,” a way to help people with dementia. Brownlee said dementia is a disease that causes cognitive decline. In fact, studies show that people suffering from dementia have brains similar to those of a newborn baby.

“The similarities are uncanny,” Brownlee said.

Brownlee said dementia patients can be afraid to undertake certain tasks because they fear they will be hit with a sudden bout of memory loss.

“They might be afraid to go to the yard, because they’re not sure if they can remember how to get back in the house,” she said.

Graves said he was motivated to become a physical therapist after attending dozens of his dad’s doctor’s appointments. He had the sense that doctors were not spending enough time with their patients, and said he looked up the national average and found that the average doctor spends 7.5 minutes with their patient per visit.

“In physical therapy, I feel like I have barely introduced myself in 7.5 minutes,” he said. “I can choose to be in a profession where I’m allotted more time with people, and the ability to actually understand the root causes of issues, to help them in a more holistic fashion. Within therapy as a whole, you get to look further outside medical management.”

Brownlee said the most rewarding part of her job is the final day of therapy, because it allows her to reflect on the progress her patient has made.

“You see where they started out with their goals and see how they progressed,” she said. “Some people start out completely dependent on their aides for help, and after we work with them, we’ve gotten them stronger, and they can do things themselves to the point they can go home. Our end goal is to get people back to their prior level of living when they come here.”

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Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com

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