Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation celebrates National Rehabilitation Awareness Week

National Rehabilitation Awareness Week was held from Sept. 17-23. The Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) Department at UC Davis Health consists of hospital assistants, administrative staff, orthopedic technicians, orthotists, speech and language pathologists, occupational therapy assistants, occupational therapists, physical therapy assistants and physical therapists.

The team works with patients of all ages and diagnoses throughout the Emergency Department, PACU, ICUs and the entire hospital. Physical medicine and rehabilitation clinicians provide a wide variety of assessment and treatment services to assist in the recovery of patients after surgery, injury or significant disease processes. They also provide services and make recommendations to assist patient care with cognition, swallowing, speech, activities of daily living, mobility, safety, caregiver training and splinting/bracing support needs.

PM&R clinicians assist in assessments and treatment to improve patient function for recovery from injury so that they can return home or advance to the next level of care as safely and quickly as possible. Additionally, therapists help with throughput, safely getting patients to the next level of care to help make room for new patients coming into the hospital.

“We would like to thank and acknowledge the PM&R staff for their patient care, for their mentoring of future clinicians, for their research and for their community service,” said Kurt Steen, acute care physical therapy supervisor. “We appreciate each and every one of them.”

The PM&R team has celebrated quite a few earned wins recently. These include the opening of and transition to the new Adult Rehabilitation Hospital, occupational and physical therapists participating in the Liver Transplant Program, the burn team working towards completing a research study and the NICU team doubling the infants caseload due to extra training and program development. Pediatric BMT is in development as well and expects its first patient in mid-October.