THE REHABILITATION PROCESS

Rehabilitation can be identified as a whole process of managing disability, with the aim to enable individuals, their families and carers to adjust and cope with their change in circumstances.  It must be based on on-going assessment, planning and evaluation and involve partnership between the individual, their social network and the health and social care team.

It typically needs to involve a range of essential disciplines such as a Specialist Consultant, Physiotherapists, Occupational Therapists, Specialist Rehabilitation Nurses/Nurse Consultant, Doctors, Psychologists, Speech and Language Therapists, Psychiatrists, Social Workers, Community Staff and Employers.  However effective rehabilitation is dependent on this group of people functioning as a team, engaged in collaborative goal planning, focusing on the disabled person and their family.

At the Royal Buckinghamshire Hospital we focus our rehabilitation upon the trends in Rehabilitation Policy in order to deliver an effective quality service to patients we are aiming to help.  We strive to provide effective rehabilitation services based upon the following principles:

• Providing interdisciplinary assessment in the acute setting to provide specialist support and advice to prevent secondary complications developing.

• Staffed by a team of specialist professionals who work as a co-coordinated interdisciplinary team to enable people to transfer skills acquired during therapy sessions to their daily living activities.  The team is currently working towards an interdisciplinary approach.  In rehabilitation this approach is shown not only to be effective, but cost effective in reducing the need for long term care.

• Delivering well planned, goal orientated rehabilitation programmes to the appropriate intensity for the person concerned, whilst supporting their family and carers to contribute to the rehabilitation process.

• Having links to the community including social services and housing departments to provide co-coordinated transition of care.

•  Working with wheelchair services and integrated community services to co-ordinate provision of specialist equipment to meet peoples changing needs.