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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