Rehabilitation

A major tenet of the care of older adults is the adequate assessment of functional status. There is abysmal training of this topic in medical schools leading most residents to believe that they can adequately assess a patient’s functional abilities within a small clinic room during a 15-minute appointment. While even fellowship trained geriatricians rarely perform full functional assessments themselves, it is vitally important for a clinician caring for older adults to understand the various parts of an assessment, what deficits in certain areas might indicate, and how they are best managed or treated. An aspiring geriatrician or geriatrics-focused family physician should not be satisfied to have “Weakness – PT Eval and Treat” as the extent of their assessment and plan in this area. A rehabilitation block would have a resident spend time with physical, occupational and speech therapists both inpatient and at a rehabilitation facility such as Wellbrooke. Ideally, multiple weeks could also be spent in Memorial’s inpatient rehabilitation unit under the direction of PMR physicians as well.