COVID-19 creates significant challenges for rehabilitation services around the world. Rehabilitation services are consistently among health services. Rehabilitation services are consistently among the health services most severely disrupted by the pandemic. At the same time, COVID-19 actually increases rehabilitation needs, both for patients who are seriously ill with the disease and for those who continue to suffer the long-term consequences of their illness.
UW Medicine has specialists in all areas of medicine, including primary care, pneumology, cardiology, allergies and infectious diseases, neurology, rheumatology, occupational medicine and psychiatry. Rehabilitation services available through the clinic include physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, rehabilitation psychology, vocational rehabilitation rehabilitation and social work. Many services were reduced to free up health personnel for intensive care services and to minimize the risk to patients, many of whom are at greater risk. 1 Rehabilitation has also been adapted, for example, by developing remote evaluation and remote treatment services.
The course in the Clinical Management of Patients with COVID-19 course series is dedicated to the rehabilitation of patients with COVID-19.For example, patients who have multiple sclerosis and a fairly serious complex disability who require specialized services are often unable to access rehabilitation. This means that patients receive more physical and occupational therapy than usual, and doctors who specialize in physical medicine and rehabilitation care for a large number of patients, helping to make the transition to outpatient rehabilitation care seamless. Each person must work as part of a complete multidisciplinary team with experience in rehabilitation, recognizing that individual members can work most of the time within other medical teams. While physical weakness and generalized weakness are obvious goals of treatment in rehabilitation, cognitive changes are often less evident at first, but can pose a major risk to patient safety.
People who are seriously ill from COVID-19 are likely to need rehabilitation during and after their acute illness. Since almost anyone with an ongoing disability is likely to have not been treated in a rehabilitation service,13 the method can be reduced to finding out if the patient has any ongoing problems or concerns. The complexity and variability of the damage caused by COVID-19, together with the pre-existing long-term disabling conditions that many patients will have, mean that there is no single method specific to COVID-19 for determining the need for rehabilitation. Most, but not all, patients are likely to need pulmonary rehabilitation after COVID-19.Mood changes should be the main goal of treatment, since anxiety and depression can cause the rehabilitation process to fail and lower the overall quality of life when recovering from any illness.
After the severe illness of COVID-19, many patients will experience a variety of problems with normal functioning and will need rehabilitation services to overcome these problems. When COVID-19 infection rates were still very high at Michigan Medicine, my colleagues in neuropsychology and rehabilitation psychology and I treated patients exclusively, both outpatient and inpatient, through video. Everyone who treats these patients wants them to thrive, but may not know the extent to which rehabilitation can help. .
