Rehabilitation
Rehabilitation is the process of removing limitations in everyday functioning, that arose due to injury, age or illness, and returning to a patient’s original condition. It may involve re-learning basic activities, such as walking or reaching and grabbing.
Who can benefit from rehabilitation?
Depending on the patient’s condition, rehabilitation has different goals.
Restorative rehabilitation focuses on interventions restoring impairments, such as muscle strength or respiratory function, to get maximal recovery of each. This is common after acute events such as major trauma, stroke, surgery, or illness.
Supportive rehabilitation increases a person’s mobility and self-care ability by teaching people compensatory strategies or alternative ways of doing things. This may include the provision of assistive equipment or environmental modifications. This is sometimes referred to as adaptive rehabilitation.
Palliative rehabilitation helps people with life-limiting conditions to improve their quality of life. It focuses on relieving pain, preventing contractures, or the use of assistive devices, in order to maximise functional independence and support comfort.
Overall, rehabilitation can reduce the length of stay in the hospital, and prevent hospital re-admissions. It also enables people to remain independent at home, take part in education and gain employment, and minimise the need for financial or caregiver support.
Who can benefit from rehabilitation?
Many different conditions create the need for rehabilitation. It is recommended for patients:
- after injuries (both light and severe),
- recovering from major surgeries or trauma,
- suffering from chronic diseases, such as MS, arthritis, or dementia,
- needing stamina management in case of asthma or chronic fatigue syndrome,
- ageing.
Are rehabilitation and physiotherapy the same?
Physiotherapy is an integral and important part of rehabilitation. It focuses on the physical part of a patient’s condition and well-being. Nevertheless, physiotherapeutic rehabilitation is known to have positive psychological effects.
There are some technical differences between physiotherapy and occupational therapy, but both teach similar things like using a wheelchair, walking, reaching and grabbing. Their goal is to make patients more independent and ready for daily activities.
Prehabilitation
If you are planning to have surgery in the near future, consider prehabilitation, which helps you recover faster after the procedure. It can also minimize the risk and severity of various injuries.
How to schedule a visit?
You can book an appointment at any time, including afternoons and weekends. Book online or give us a call at 020 8126 7766.
