We are delighted to announce the creation of a new physiotherapy post at the Royal Brompton Hospital with effect from April 2024. Cat Barraclough is working alongside the multi-disciplinary paediatric arrythmia team, providing individually tailored and targeted exercise and activity programmes to children with arrythmia. The Trust will fund the post for 18 months, with the intention being that it is then absorbed into statutory funding.
Physical activity is vital for health and wellbeing, but children with arrythmia and their parents are often highly anxious about exercise. Parents are often unsure how their child can exercise safely within the limits of their underlying condition, medication, and any fitted cardiac devices such as a pacemaker or Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator. The fear of triggering a sudden change in rhythm that may threaten life or require a visit to hospital can be paralysing, make anxiety worse and result in children being excluded from social peer groups.
Cat Barraclough
Cat Barraclough is a highly specialist physiotherapist with considerable experience in arrythmias. She has worked in many different areas within the paediatric field with a focus on patients with lung and heart conditions. Being a keen runner, hockey enthusiast and having two young children herself, she is passionate about keeping children active and healthy through participation in exercise, activity and sport from early years right up to adulthood.
Cat says: “I hope to improve the physical functioning and quality of life for this group of children. In addition, I hope to raise awareness of this group of conditions, promote exercise participation for the benefit of physical and psychological health and be a forerunner to enable others to set up services nationally and internationally”.