There is no reason that the Physiotherapists could not become further involved with plastering and splinting, and in fact they would like to. This is something the Physiotherapy and Orthopaedic Depts at Suva could explore further.

Feedback from the teaching day was very positive, with good discussion between students and local physiotherapists. The presence of the Curtin University students encouraged much discussion about the differences in training in Fiji and Australia. Certificates were awarded to all attendees by the University of the Pacific. Further teaching for the Suva Physiotherapy department would be a valuable investment as they do tend to stay in their positions long term and have limited Hand Therapy expertise.

The Suva physiotherapists stated that there is poor interdepartmental communication with referrals to physiotherapy by surgeons being very brief and not including any operation detail. EM reinforced the need to obtain all the relevant information about the patients by retrieving their medical records, before treating a patient, if this occurred, and to alert the dept referring the patients that brief referrals are inadequate.

The need for good operation reports was emphasised, and for therapists to see these with their referral. The operation reports in Lautoka are now done on computer since SM has instituted this system there and supported it with donations eg printer, ink, laptops etc and this system was discussed.

The keeping of a Hand log book in physiotherapy for departmental and case review, as well as for research was described as a valuable tool for the Suva hospital hand physiotherapists. Both the university and hospital staff showed an interest in this, and may begin to trial a hand injuries log with detail about their referred patients- name, phone numbers, cause of injury, date of injury and time, date and time of surgery , surgical/ conservative intervention, date of first hand therapy visit, dates follow up, date of discharge. In Lautoka this helped to identify the common causes of injury and due to the high number of workplace accidents EM undertook a workplace assessment of both the Lautoka Sugar and Woodchip mill on the 5th trip.

Attended case review section of a half day teaching session for orthopaedic trainees run by SM at Suva hospital to provide physiotherapy and splinting input.