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.
“Every morning he was able to kneel and pray,” Alligood shared. “The therapists in rehab individualized his care so he could get back to doing that.”
Alligood celebrated the coordinated care provided by everyone at the hospital, noting the skill, compassion and individualized care they provided. The experience provided a powerful reminder of the impact rehabilitation professionals have on the lives of patients and their loved ones.
“From the housekeeping staff who cleaned my father’s room, to the care partners who met his basic needs, to the nurses who administered his medications, to the hospitalists and physicians who ordered tests and performed his surgery, to the admissions staff and the therapists who saw his potential to regain his quality of life, to the case managers who coordinated his needs for a safe discharge—they eased my stress because I knew he was getting the best care possible,” she said. “After 30 years of caring for others, it means so much to know that when my family needed support, ECU Health was there for us. I sincerely appreciate all of the efforts made to care not only for my father, but for our entire family.”
Share your story with us at go.ecuhealth.org/grateful. Stories like these show the lasting impact of ECU Health.