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Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Physicians

Diagnose and treat disorders requiring physiotherapy to provide physical, mental, and occupational rehabilitation.

What you’d do

  • Document examination results, treatment plans, and patients' outcomes.
  • Examine patients to assess mobility, strength, communication, or cognition.
  • Develop comprehensive plans for immediate and long-term rehabilitation, including therapeutic exercise, speech and occupational therapy, counseling, cognitive retraining, patient, family or caregiver education, or community reintegration.
  • Assess characteristics of patients' pain, such as intensity, location, or duration, using standardized clinical measures.
  • Monitor effectiveness of pain management interventions, such as medication or spinal injections.
  • Provide inpatient or outpatient medical management of neuromuscular disorders, musculoskeletal trauma, acute and chronic pain, deformity or amputation, cardiac or pulmonary disease, or other disabling conditions.
  • Consult or coordinate with other rehabilitative professionals, including physical and occupational therapists, rehabilitation nurses, speech pathologists, neuropsychologists, behavioral psychologists, social workers, or medical technicians.
  • Prescribe orthotic and prosthetic applications and adaptive equipment, such as wheelchairs, bracing, or communication devices, to maximize patient function and self-sufficiency.

Skills that matter

  • Critical Thinking
  • Active Listening
  • Complex Problem Solving
  • Judgment and Decision Making
  • Reading Comprehension
  • Social Perceptiveness

How to get there

Extensive preparation: most need graduate school, such as a master's degree or higher

Also called

  • MD (Medical Doctor)
  • Physiatrist
  • Physician
  • PM and R MD (Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Medical Doctor)
  • Acute Rehabilitation Unit Physiatrist
  • Attending Physician
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