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What is rehabilitation medicine?
Rehabilitation Medicine (also known as Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation or Physiatry) is a very fulfilling medical specialty that focuses on improving function and quality of life in everyone, no matter what their medical condition is! It’s the clinical medical specialty that is primarily focused on assessing and treating people who have reduced functional ability due to illness, disease, injury or from birth.
Rehabilitation medicine physicians (aka physiatrists) are specialist doctors who utilise the holistic biopsychosocial model of Engel which encompasses all of the biomedical, psychological and social aspects of health and life.
What do rehabilitation medicine physicians do?
People often ask me what I do as a specialist doctor in rehabilitation medicine.
Rehabilitation physicians provide medical care to people who have become disabled by injury, illness, disease or have been disabled from birth. Not many people identify themselves as being disabled as this is an old term, now replaced by loss of function or activity limitation. The common conditions we treat include
- Persistent (chronic) pain (neck, back, work-related, post-surgical, osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia)
