What Is Rehabilitation?
Rehabilitation is a field of medicine; it is a set of interventions needed to restore someone to healthy and normal life, help recover from illness and surgery.
The rehabilitation first and foremost seeks to restore lost skills and functioning for a daily living quickly and efficiently. An individual rehabilitation program assists a person in adjusting to their new life as smoothly and painlessly as possible. The rehabilitation plan focuses both on the medical aspect of a person’s issues, i.e. their illness, and the non-medical too—their personality, profession, and social connections. Strategies to comfortable rehabilitation include retaining a familiar environment to support the patient. Then they will spend less amount in rehabilitation as it will be as effective as possible.
Main Areas of Rehabilitation
Medical rehabilitation is primarily aimed at restoring health. This is achieved through alternate pathways to help recover lost or damaged function; in other cases, specialists focus on compensatory skills involving adapting around the remaining skills to continue with the new life.
Rehabilitation includes an equally important psychological aspect; it also involves work with a therapist as it helps stabilize their psychological state and shape the right attitude towards treatment and recovery measures, communicating their importance. Upon seeing a therapist, people tend to comply with the doctor’s recommendations and all activities related to rehabilitation more willingly. The specialist is also responsible for creating a comfortable environment that is best fit to help the patient adapt to illness-related restrictions.
Professional rehabilitation factors in the patient’s future employment and retraining due to the loss of certain skills. It is about seeing the patient’s working ability and the chances of its recovery.
Social service agencies should therefore work closely with doctors. After all, after a person experiences a serious illness or surgery, they seek to feel economically independent again, like a fully-fledged member of society.
We can therefore say that rehabilitation is a comprehensive concept that affects all areas of a person’s life. All types of rehabilitation are important; a successful recovery requires a holistic approach, so they should all be considered together.
When Does a Person Need Rehabilitation?
The beginning of rehabilitation means the end of the active treatment phase and the start of the body’s recovery. Anyone who has experienced illness, injury, surgery, cancer, and many other illnesses requires comprehensive rehabilitation. Older people also benefit from rehabilitation treatment, as the body functions less well with age.
The illness is a deciding factor when it comes to rehabilitation components:
- Special exercises for developing speaking skills, overcoming communication difficulties to create new social connections. Those who have suffered a craniocerebral injury will find this most useful.
- Change of residence (e.g. for elderly people living on upper floors who find it difficult to go downstairs).
- Promoting a healthy lifestyle and diet awareness, which minimizes the risk of potential illnesses and diseases.
- Making prosthetics for patients who have undergone amputation, joint replacement surgery, etc. It is important not only to fit a prosthesis but also to educate the patient on its use.
- Fixing splints and applying dressings to accelerate tissue healing, reduce the severity of edema and prevent infectious complications as the wounds tighten.
- Drug therapy. For example, for children with certain neurological conditions (cerebral palsy, trauma, etc.).
- Psychological help. Especially for those with depression.
- Vision rehabilitation.
Each patient gets their own individual rehabilitation plan, as the approach and interventions depend on the goals and objectives, the patient’s condition, and their progress. Rehabilitation can take place in the hospital, clinics, special centers, or at home.
Rehabilitation Methods
Each patient goes through their unique set of procedures, which may include:
- botulinum therapy;
- halotherapy;
- phytotherapy;
- hydrotherapy;
- inhalation with medicines;
- kinesiotherapy;
- cognitive behavioral therapy;
- cryotherapy;
- sessions with a speech therapist;
- magnetotherapy;
- occupational therapy;
- massage and manual therapy;
- thermotherapy;
- ultrasound;
- extracorporeal shockwave therapy.
Abroad, doctors are not afraid to involve the patient’s relatives in the rehabilitation process and train them in care and other necessary procedures. Specialists only use tried and tested safe methods.
Surgery
When it comes to recovery, specialists tend to opt for conservative methods, as surgery is again followed by rehabilitation. For example, surgeries are used to treat post-radiation fistulas caused by radiation therapy for cancer. Before a surgical rehabilitation doctors weigh up all pros and cons, that is, benefits and risks, to avoid further harm to the patient’s health.