National rehabilitation centre will 'push the boundaries of rehabilitation for the next generation'

Links with Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre

The specialist NHS facility will be built at the Stanford Hall Rehabilitation Estate, which already hosts the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre (DMRC) which opened in 2018.

Nottingham University Hospitals will provide clinical staff, while an academic involving the University of Nottingham and Loughborough University will offer a host of research opportunities.

The centre’s remit is to act as a national hub that will transform how people recover from and regain fitness and function following serious injury or illness, and to widen access to rehabilitation beds. Though physiotherapists and other staff will primarily treat patients from the East Midlands region (replacing and upgrading existing services in Nottingham), it will also be designated as a national and international facility.

This long overdue centre will push the boundaries of rehabilitation for the next generation and bring real impact in terms of helping people to realise their full potential following injury or illness [Miriam Duffy]

Hydrotherapy pool and other facilities

Natalie Forrest, senior responsible officer for the NHS New Hospital Programme, said the benefits to NHS patients would be ‘substantial and life changing’.

‘This is the latest of our New Hospital Programme schemes to get under way as part of the biggest hospital building programme in a generation, providing more effective and efficient facilities that will help transform the way care is delivered.’

The centre will share some specialist facilities with the DMRC such as the hydrotherapy pool, gait lab and CAREN (Computer Assisted Rehabilitation Environment) - high-tech treadmill device to help people to learn to walk again.

The rationale for co-locating both the Defence facility and the NHS facility side-by-side on the same site is to facilitate sharing of expertise in ways which have never been possible or achieved before. 

Sharing approach

Under the new arrangement, specialist knowledge and skills that exist within Defence medicine because of the of the injuries they treat can be used for the benefit of NHS patients.

Expertise from NHS clinical leads and practitioners will similarly transfer in the other direction. This sharing concept is at the heart of the proposition and will result in improvement across all aspects of clinical rehabilitation, a trust statement added.

To read the full version of an article that appeared on Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust’s website, click