Learning about rehabilitation

Not many teaching hospitals or practices in Britain can offer a single service specialty of rehabilitation as a forum for undergraduate learning, and it is therefore necessary either to create a simulated programme or to draw together a range of services or specialties solely for teaching purposes. In this paper, a short medical undergraduate course at Aberdeen University Medical School, using the second approach, is described. The focus of the course was on the doctor's role, in every patient and specialty, in the active prevention of temporary or permanent dependence and the ultimate aim was to create in medical students a more positive attitude to holistic patient management. A problem-solving framework was used, in which the students were asked to draw up a provisional problem list for patients from nearly all specialties seen in the post-acute phase in Aberdeen hospitals and in the recovering or adapted state at home. In was hoped that in the process of compiling the data-base students would gain some knowledge of the functional consequences of illness and of the profession and services which might be able to help. Students then met clinical staff to discuss their problem lists and the doctor's role in preventing or treating functional problems. Subjective assessments of the course by students and staff suggest that, although the students had difficulty at first in seeing the doctor's role in relation to functional problems, by the end of the course most had acquired, through discussion of particular patients, awareness of the importance of that role in assessment and patient education. On the basis of this attempt, the course will be continued but with some modifications.