Rehabilitation and after care

After an accident you may need some rehabilitation to try and recover from your injuries. Rehabilitation can involve physical rehabilitation or cognitive rehabilitation depending on what you require. There is a variety of people that may be involved in rehabilitation including a physiotherapist, an occupational therapist, a speech and language therapist, a dietician, a psychologist etc.

See our new video on the impact of Acute Stress on the Recovery process Here

You may receive some rehabilitation in hospital or the therapists will give you exercises to do by yourself either in hospital or when you go home. Some people need more rehabilitation than others due to the severity of their injuries or their type of injuries and they will then be referred on to specific rehabilitation centres. These include spinal rehabilitation, amputee rehabilitation or neuro- rehabilitation. The multi-disciplinary team, made up of doctors, nurses and therapists will discuss the rehabilitation options and requirements with the patient and their family to decide on the most appropriate option, depending on what is available. We have also made a template which you can download to write down the peoples’ names that you will meet if you want to remember them.

The AfterTrauma recovery app has a variety of functions to help you recover, including a place where you can store and refer to your rehabilitation plan. You and your therapist can also set and monitor physiotherapy and other exercises in the Challenges section. You can download the app here.

Karen is an occupational therapist who specialises in trauma rehabilitation.  She explains what rehabilitation aims to achieve in the short video below.