What is rehabilitation?
Why do I need rehabilitation?
How can I adjust my mindset in rehabilitation treatment?
Rehabilitation medicine is an emerging discipline, a new concept that emerged in the mid-20th century. It is a medical discipline that seeks to eliminate and alleviate human functional disorders, compensate and reconstruct human functional deficiencies, and seek to improve and enhance all aspects of human functions, that is, the prevention, diagnosis, assessment, treatment, training and management of functional disorders. Sports therapy is an important element and tool of modern rehabilitation medicine.
Rehabilitation medicine is a medical discipline related to the promotion of rehabilitation of people with disabilities and patients. More specifically, rehabilitation medicine is a medical discipline that applies the prevention, diagnosis and assessment, treatment, training and management of functional disorders for the purpose of rehabilitation.
Rehabilitation medicine is also known as the third medicine, clinical medicine as the first medicine and preventive medicine as the second medicine. In the modern medical system, prevention, medical treatment and rehabilitation have been interlinked to form a unified body. Modern rehabilitation medicine has flourished in the past half century, and its development is the inevitable trend of human medical career development, and also the result of modern scientific and technological progress.
Basic principles
The three basic principles of rehabilitation medicine: functional exercise, comprehensive rehabilitation, and social reintegration.
American psychologist Maslow put forward the theory of needs in the 1950s, which believes that people have five kinds of needs.
(1) Physiological needs, including food, thirst, sex, and sleep.
② Security needs, including the need for their own security and property security, such as the need for social security, life and property security, a better living environment, and old age.
③Social needs, including the need for love, friendship, group life and social activities.
④Respect needs, including both self-respect and respect, are generated by self-esteem, the evaluation of self, personal talent, personal achievement motivation, etc. Respect for others generates the pursuit of reputation and status and the desire for power.
⑤ The need for self-actualization, which is a person’s need to realize his or her ideal ambition, is a higher human need. These five basic needs are arranged into different levels according to their importance, starting with physiological needs, followed by security, social, respect, and self-actualization needs. People with disabilities also have the same needs and can stay at some intermediate stage. Therefore, comprehensive rehabilitation is needed for people with disabilities, not only for functional training, but also for physical, psychological, occupational and social life, so that they can eventually return to society.
I. What is rehabilitation?
Rehabilitation is a branch of medicine that mainly uses medical measures to treat people with physical disabilities who have functional impairments left by trauma or disease, and whose ability to live or work is temporarily or permanently reduced or lost, making it difficult for them to live independently, so that their functions can be restored to the maximum possible, creating conditions for them to return to society. Postoperative rehabilitation (rehabilitation treatment after surgery) is the comprehensive and coordinated use of various means (including functional exercises, physical therapy, psychological guidance, etc.) to promote the physical and mental health of postoperative patients and to restore their functions as soon as possible and to the maximum extent possible, so that patients can return to society. Restoration of function (mobility, muscle strength, walking, running, jumping, etc.) is the direct goal of rehabilitation, and reintegration into society (daily life, work, sports, etc.) is the ultimate goal of rehabilitation.
Simply put, rehabilitation is a medical discipline that addresses functional impairments and uses a variety of modalities such as medication, surgery, functional exercises, physical therapy, and psychological guidance to improve function and enhance quality of life.
II. Why do we need rehabilitation treatment?
After illness, injury, or surgery, the body will have certain deficits in function. A small percentage of these deficits can be restored on their own. However, most of the functions can only be gradually restored or compensated after a certain period of time by timely and correct rehabilitation and functional exercises, so as to achieve the goal of restoring functions and returning to society. Post-operative rehabilitation is the guarantee of the surgical effect: good post-operative function comes from timely and correct rehabilitation of the patient’s own conditions and active cooperation.
Therefore, rehabilitation is not just a passive treatment. Only with the active cooperation of patients and the joint efforts of doctors and patients can we achieve the best possible treatment results and avoid complications, sequelae and loss of function.
3. How to adjust one’s mentality in the process of rehabilitation treatment?
1.Discard the concept of “nursing disease”
Excessive bed rest can only aggravate the muscle atrophy of the limb, resulting in joint adhesions, pressure sores, deep vein thrombosis, phlebitis, decreased proprioception, decreased coordination, and continued decline in limb function, etc. Therefore, in addition to appropriate functional exercises for the affected limb, other parts of the body should be practiced in order to maintain good overall physical fitness and promote recovery from local injuries. Activities of daily living that can be completed independently should not rely on others to help, so as to avoid further decline in function.
2.Establish the correct concept of “early recovery
The loss and decline of function starts immediately after the injury or illness. Therefore, it is necessary to grasp the good timing of early treatment and start exercises and treatment when the functions are just beginning or even not yet declining, so as to avoid and reduce the occurrence of complications and sequelae and achieve “early recovery and early benefit”. In order to avoid delaying the time to cause a longer recovery cycle.
3.Overcome the fear
The rehabilitation treatment and exercises we are now carrying out have been clinically used for a long time and proved to be safe and effective, and the correct exercises are not dangerous. In addition, there will be help and guidance from doctors and nurses during the exercises. Excessive fear and nervousness will only cause unnecessary psychological burden and affect the recovery of functions.
4.Overcome inertia
Most of the functional exercises are boring and need to be repeated many times and persistently performed for a long time before they can produce and achieve good results. The idea of “immediate results” and “waiting for a slow recovery” is wrong and will only cause adverse consequences or delay the best time for treatment.
5.Emergency and noise
Tissue healing, alteration; functional improvement, recovery; inflammation and pain remission, etc. have their own development pattern, and need a period of time. The blind pursuit of progress is very likely to be dangerous. You should gradually increase or decrease the appropriate treatment, increase the amount of exercise, the difficulty of the exercise and the amount of various activities, and do not force to try activities that are not yet allowed by the doctor, otherwise it is very likely to cause serious adverse consequences that are not expected.
Rehabilitation: refers to the integrated and coordinated application of medical, social, educational and vocational measures to reduce the physical, mental and social dysfunction of the disabled person, so that he or she can be rehabilitated and reintegrated into society as a whole.