Meet our teams
Our therapy teams include physiotherapists, occupational therapists and therapy support staff.
Our therapy team helps to move patients through the acute medical unit, on to the most suitable place. We'll assess you to see if you can safely go home, or if you need to go to a rehab unit or be admitted to a ward. We can also start to treat you - this may mean working with you to improve your independence or starting rehabilitation or chest physiotherapy.
If you need to stay in hospital, we help to start your journey by taking your social history, assessing you and making a therapy plan that other teams can follow on the ward.
We're based in the oncology centre and work with patients on wards including the Teenage Cancer Trust unit, the Macmillan acute oncology unit and the haematology ward (where patients receive stem cell transplants). We're also involved with the lymphoedema clinic and the monthly haemophiliac clinic.
Our team can help you with rehabilitation for physical, social and spiritual issues while you're having radiotherapy or chemotherapy. We have a range of equipment and activities to help you to reach your goals, and we can also work with your relatives.
If you're having stem cell transplants or lymphoma treatment, we can provide extra therapy sessions to help you stay active.
You may find these websites useful for more information:
Our cardiothoracic therapy team will treat you after heart or lung surgery, including surgery related to an adult congenital heart disorder or emergency surgery. We'll work with you throughout your hospital journey, from intensive care to the high dependency unit, and onto the ward until you go home.
We provide acute respiratory care after surgery and work with you on rehabilitation (including after a stroke). We'll also help to plan for when you leave hospital. If you've had very complex surgery and are staying in hospital for some time, you'll have intensive rehabilitation with us.
You can find useful information on the British Heart Foundation website.
The physiotherapists, occupational therapists and therapy assistants in our children's therapy team are specially trained to work with children and young adults. Children and young adults need to be treated differently as they are still developing and maturing.
We work with children who come to see us as outpatients, and those who are staying in hospital. We also work closely with parents and carers to build an ongoing supportive link.
Our cystic fibrosis physiotherapy team work within the regional cystic fibrosis service caring for you in hospital, as an outpatient and at home. We see patients from a wide area, stretching from Wiltshire and Dorset, across to East Sussex, the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands.
We work with you to manage secretions using various airway clearance techniques including using autogenic drainage, positive expiratory pressure (PEP), oscillatory devices and non-invasive ventilation. We also provide wider care such as helping you with musculoskeletal issues, postural alignment and incontinence, and offer exercise programmes to maintain your strength, fitness and flexibility. You'll get an annual review with us, and continued support.
If you're in the general intensive care unit (GICU), we can work with you, your relatives and the wider team to help you with physical, cognitive or respiratory issues. We have a variety of equipment and activities that we can use in your rehabilitation to help you to achieve your own personal goals.
We offer extra therapy sessions to help you to get mobile again at the earliest opportunity. This is an award winning project, and has been shown to reduce the length of time you spend on GICU.
Our general intensive care unit team also work with head and neck patients on ward F5. After you've had surgery for cancer, we'll help you with breathing, and work with you to get you mobile again.
Useful information is available from the following websites:
- ICU steps, a charity supporting patients in intensive care
- NICE guidelines on rehabilitation after critical illness in adults.
Our medicine team are based on the acute medical wards, covering respiratory medicine, hepatology, gastroenterology and endocrinology.
We'll work closely with you and the rest of the team to assess and treat you, as well as planning for when you leave hospital.
We can help you with a range of issues from breathing problems to preventing falls. Our role in supporting you might involve complex manual handling, cognitive assessments, assessing your home environment and giving you equipment to help you to be independent and recover. This may be providing a hoist, pressure care relief equipment or respiratory support devices to use at home.
We work within medicine for older people to treat and rehabilitate people with a variety of medical conditions, specialising in frailty, falls and dementia care. We work with the rest of the team to improve your quality of life, increase what you are able to do, and support you in safely leaving hospital.
Our team can help you to be mobile and do as much as possible physically. We work to reduce your risk of falling over, providing respiratory care, assess you for and help with any cognitive impairments, and give you equipment to help you be independent or make you comfortable at the end of your life. We can help you to set and achieve realistic goals to enhance your quality of life in your later years.
You may be interested to read more on the following websites:
The adult musculo-skeletal (MSK) outpatient therapy service is based in the main therapy department at Southampton General Hospital. Our facilities include a large gymnasium, hydrotherapy pools, treatment cubicles, hand therapy tables, and splinting and electrotherapy equipment. Most of our patients come to us from trauma and orthopaedics, rheumatology, the emergency department, and occupational health. However, we see patients referred from any area of the Trust.
We start by assessing you, and discussing your goals and expectations. Your treatment choices will be tailored to your particular needs, and range from manual therapy, acupuncture, exercise and advice, group exercise classes, hydrotherapy, electrotherapy, making bespoke splints and giving you appropriate functional aids. We treat lots of people, and see a wide variety of conditions ranging from fractures or dislocations, soft tissue injuries, post surgery, acute and chronic pain syndromes, and long term rheumatological conditions.
Decisions will always be based around your goals and what you need. Our treatments aim to improve what you are able to do and your movements, help you to be independent, and reduce any pain.
We have a wide range of patient information leaflets on musculo-skeletal conditions and treatments.
We have physiotherapists at Princess Anne Hospital who can work with you while you're staying in hospital, or as an outpatient.
Our obstetric service is for pregnancy related musculo-skeletal conditions such as pelvic girdle pain, carpal tunnel syndrome and rib flare. You can refer yourself to this service, from week 12 of your pregnancy until ten days after your baby has been born. This is for women having a baby at the Princess Anne Hospital, the New Forest Birth Centre, or having a home birth booked through the Princess Anne Hospital.
Our gynaecological service will see you if you've been referred by a consultant for an urogynaecological condition, including continence issues, pelvic floor dysfunction, prolapse and dyspareunia.
Our pulmonary rehabilitation service is based within the outpatient therapy department.
We hold group exercise and education classes twice a week for people with COPD and other chronic respiratory conditions. If you have difficulty in a class environment, we can also offer one to one exercise sessions.
You can be referred to us during a stay in hospital, or from attending an outpatient clinic.
Our stroke therapy team specialise in treating patients who have had a stroke.
We'll assess you within 24 hours of admission and treat you in the initial and rehabilitation phases of your stroke journey. We work closely with the rest of the team looking after you to make your rehabilitation seamless.
We'll help you to regain your independence through rehabilitation, focusing on assessing and improving your position, mobility, balance, how much you can do on your own, your cognition and perception, and your mood.
Setting realistic goals can help you to stay motivated, and we'll help you with this. If you have ongoing therapy goals, the community stroke team will follow up with you at home.
For more information, you can look at the Stroke Association website, Different Strokes website (a charity supporting younger stroke survivors), Headway Southampton website (improving life after a brain injury), and Health Works at Eastleigh Borough Council, providing opportunities to get active.
We provide respiratory care and early rehabilitation if you've had abdominal surgery, and will also work with you if you've had a longer hospital stay on the gastrointestinal failure unit.
As part of making sure you have the best possible experience in hospital, we're involved in improved preparation for surgery, including enhanced assessments and education for you. This also supports our work to help you recover quickly from surgery, and leave hospital within seven days where possible.
You can read more on the the NHS website about
Find advice around surgery and driving on the GOV.UK website.
The respiratory centre is where physiotherapists and other members of the team see outpatients (patients who are not staying in hospital) with chronic and acute respiratory conditions. We also see patients in the community.
We provide an airway clearance service offering advice and education on managing chronic respiratory conditions such as bronchiectasis and COPD. We will teach you techniques to clear your airways and breathlessness management. We work closely with our colleagues in pulmonary rehabilitation, and can refer you to teams in Southampton and the surrounding areas as needed.
We offer a specialist breathing pattern disorder service, treating patients from across the Wessex region who have complex dysfunctional breathing syndrome and the symptoms associated with this.
We are also a regional specialist centre for patients who need home non-invasive ventilation (NIV) and cough augmentation. We cover a large area including Hampshire, the Isle of Wight and Dorset, treating patients with neuromuscular conditions, chest wall deformities, COPD and obstructive sleep apnoea or obesity hypoventilation. We work closely with surrounding hospitals and hospices to help with patients using this equipment.
We'll work with you in trauma and orthopaedics after you've had elective surgery, such as a hip or knee replacement, or after you've come to hospital in an emergency after a fall or other accident; you may have had surgery after a fractured neck of femur.
The therapy we offer includes assessing you physically and cognitively, supporting you to plan your own goals, and working with you to achieve your short term goals while you're in hospital.
As a major trauma centre we assess and treat patients with multiple complex orthopaedic injuries, working closely with the wider team to give you the best care we can.
We'll work with you and your family or carers to encourage you to be as independent as possible, including providing walking aids and equipment where needed.
We work with you if you've had vascular surgery during your stay in hospital as well as once you have gone home. We're a regional centre of excellence, and see patients from Southampton and Portsmouth as well as the surrounding areas.
If you're going to have a major amputation, we'll meet you before your surgery to do a detailed assessment of your social situation, where you live, physical ability and equipment requirements. You can ask questions, learn about the changes you'll experience with a major amputation, and find out about the services available and post operative care.
After your surgery, we'll support you to be independent through education, exercise prescription, gait re-education, and assessing how much you can do physically and cognitively, as well as what equipment you need.
Our outpatient service provides highly specialised rehabilitation for patients who have had major amputations, working closely with the local prosthetic centres.
If you have intermittent claudication, your consultant will refer you to our senior physiotherapist and we'll invite you to our weekly exercise class.
Other websites you may find useful are
We have a team working work across the Wessex Neurological Centre, which is a regional specialist centre for neurology and neurosurgery. We might see you if you are in the neuro intensive care unit, the regional transfer unit, the neurology wards or F4 spinal ward.
Our teams rehabilitate patients with a wide range of physical, neurological, cognitive and respiratory issues following surgery or as a result of a severe injury. We work with you from you admission until you leave hospital.
We also work with patients at The Face Place, dedicated to treating patients with facial problems, and we work alongside consultants at the spinal clinic to assess patients before and after spinal surgery.
Other websites providing useful information are
