Prosthetic Rehabilitation

Words: 1115
Pages: 5

The purpose of this proposal is to share information on and help you understand why the University of Findlay should incorporate a class that focuses on the cooperation of physical and occupational therapy in the rehabilitation process for individuals with prosthetics. We chose The University of Findlay because we are currently students majoring in physical and occupational therapy and we can see how the addition of this class could benefit our education and help us prepare for our future. The University of Findlay already has a class on prosthetic rehabilitation, but the class we are proposing will focus on the collaborative approach between physical and occupational therapy. This class would be implemented into the graduate school curriculum …show more content…
In the past 23 years, prosthetics has gone from placeholders for limbs to functional devices that allow people with amputations to excel at various activities. An example of the advancement in prosthetics can be observed in the various types of sports athletes with prosthetics are able to compete (Niman, 2013). With the increase of people using prosthetics there is also a need for therapists that can aid these individuals after surgery when trying to use and strengthen the functional ability of the limb with the prosthetic. The rehabilitation team is there to help the patients handle emergency situations, perform daily activities, improve their walk, and try new things like sports (Prosthetic FAQs, 2015). In order to achieve these tasks individuals with prosthetics may have to work with the rehabilitation team for six months to a year after …show more content…
It is important for PTs and OTs to be able to communicate and effectively interact with each other and the patient so that the best rehabilitation methods can be used for each patient to improve his or her quality of life. According to Aguilar, Stupans, Scutter and King (2013), it is essential to teach students studying physical and occupational therapy about the values of each occupation so when they are working as a physical or occupational therapist there will be less knowledge limitations between the perspective fields. Both PTs and OTs can benefit from learning more about each other’s fields by working together in a class setting. This proposal would help bridge the learning gap between the PT and OT students at University of Findlay since there are, currently, no classes that focus on both the PT and OT approach to dealing with the process of prosthetic rehabilitation. In addition, there are no similar PT and OT programs in the area or country, to our knowledge, that have a curriculum that require their students to have a class together like the class that we are trying to