"Everybody was very polite and very careful"

I attended a balance class in St Andrews church hall last summer on a 10 week course and a young man called Paul was the instructor. He always had someone help him from the physio department too, and I must say I thought it was a good class. He was very careful explaining things to us, telling us why we had to do a particular exercise and introduced items to us like resistance bands- he didn’t over work us but he was just very careful, and so was the female physio with him.

He was calm and had a nice quiet voice and was just generally a very nice person and he always explained things well if he found someone not to understand him. We did improve over the 10 weeks through exercises in the class and at home. Most of us did improve by the end of the course-movements were better and even those using aids appeared able to move better as well. We just were all very pleased and in fact we wanted to continue. It was an enjoyable time and we even got to know other people in the group. Paul gave us a number to refer to if we felt we needed to speak to him or someone in the team during the week-if we wanted advice.

This year I was taken to hospital because of vertigo, which affected my balance. Since I have been home I have had 3 further visits from Paul to see how I was at home and to check I was walking ok and whether my balance was good or bad. Whilst here he was always very polite and very caring in the way he spoke about my health issues and he has a way of helping to do the exercises without being intrusive. He asked to look at other things in terms of practical help in the house, for example rails on the wall up the staircase and on the steps outside my front door. He was checking the successful completion of these jobs. Paul has left his work contact details in case I need any advice, I haven’t needed to and I hope I wont need to either.

Other members of his team in his department have been very polite, including a young woman who came out to check what equipment was needed in my house. They sent out a man with a van to fix the equipment and he was lovely too. Everybody was very polite and very careful around me.