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Objective：Only 44 of the 82 university medical schools in Japan have rehabilitation medicine departments, although rehabilitation medicine is one of the 19 basic specialties recognized by the Japanese Medical Specialty Board, and many medical doctors are concerned regarding selecting rehabilitation medicine as a basic specialty without sufficient education in the field. The “Let's Become a Physiatrist” Seminar has been organized since 2017 to eliminate such concerns, and this study aimed to investigate how these results are manifested in the number of majors.Methods：We examined the number of past attendees and tracked how many of them became rehabilitation medicine majors.Results：The number of seminar attendees over a 5-year period was 589. The number of on-demand viewers in FY2020 and FY2021, which were held via the web, was 554. A total of 116 of the 471 physicians who began specialty training in rehabilitation medicine after the seminar was planned attended or web viewed the seminar accounting for 24.63％．This percentage has been increasing each year, with 36.81％ of the majors who applied in 2022 attending the seminar, and the number of multiple attendees also increased. The number of majors has increased significantly doubling to 144 in 2022 compared with 74 in 2018.Conclusion：In many cases, the seminar helped the attendees learn more about physiatrists and develop their thoughts while attending multiple times. Thus, they started their majors. Five years have passed since we started planning this seminar, and we believe that the results are now coming to fruition.
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Objective：Only 44 of the 82 university medical schools in Japan have rehabilitation medicine departments, although rehabilitation medicine is one of the 19 basic specialties recognized by the Japanese Medical Specialty Board, and many medical doctors are concerned regarding selecting rehabilitation medicine as a basic specialty without sufficient education in the field. The “Let's Become a Physiatrist” Seminar has been organized since 2017 to eliminate such concerns, and this study aimed to investigate how these results are manifested in the number of majors.Methods：We examined the number of past attendees and tracked how many of them became rehabilitation medicine majors.Results：The number of seminar attendees over a 5-year period was 589. The number of on-demand viewers in FY2020 and FY2021, which were held via the web, was 554. A total of 116 of the 471 physicians who began specialty training in rehabilitation medicine after the seminar was planned attended or web viewed the seminar accounting for 24.63％．This percentage has been increasing each year, with 36.81％ of the majors who applied in 2022 attending the seminar, and the number of multiple attendees also increased. The number of majors has increased significantly doubling to 144 in 2022 compared with 74 in 2018.Conclusion：In many cases, the seminar helped the attendees learn more about physiatrists and develop their thoughts while attending multiple times. Thus, they started their majors. Five years have passed since we started planning this seminar, and we believe that the results are now coming to fruition.
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Objectives: This study aimed to determine the relationship between the number of board-certified physiatrists and the amount of inpatient rehabilitation delivered.Materials and Methods: We analyzed open data from 2017 in the National Database of Health Insurance Claims and Specific Health Checkups of Japan and compared the volume of inpatient rehabilitation services between prefectures to examine regional disparities. We also examined the relationship between the volume of rehabilitation services provided and the number of board-certified physiatrists.Results: The population-adjusted number of inpatient rehabilitation units per prefecture ranged from a maximum of 659,951 to a minimum of 172,097, a disparity of 3.8-fold. The population-adjusted number of board-certified physiatrists was 4.8 in the highest region and 0.8 in the lowest region, a disparity of 5.8-fold. The population-adjusted number of board-certified physiatrists was significantly correlated with the population-adjusted total number of inpatient rehabilitation units (r=0.600, P<0.001). Correlations were between the number of board-certified physiatrists and the number of rehabilitation units in cerebrovascular and orthopedic services, but not in cardiovascular, respiratory, or oncology services.Conclusion: Large regional disparities manifested in the amount of inpatient rehabilitation provided in Japan. An association was found between the number of board-certified physiatrists and rehabilitation units delivered. It may be necessary to train more BCPs in regions with fewer units to eliminate these disparities.
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According to statistics from the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare for the last ten years, the number of people with physically disabled persons' certificates increased from about 4,370,000 in 2001 to more than 5 million in 2008 and reached about 5,110,000 in 2010. The incidence of stroke and various internal diseases are increasing following an increase in lifestyle-related diseases and the development of Japan's rapidly aging society. In this social background, the physiatrist has many chances to write a physically disabled persons' medical certificate during the patients' care-planning. The most important point to consider is to understand the reason why the patient wants to get a physically disabled persons' certificate. Patients have several needs in their care-plan requiring a physically disabled persons' certificate such as financial aid for medical bills and travel expenses, and also for the cost or supply for orthosis, prosthesis and other technical aids for the disabled. The degree of invalidity must correlate with the medical findings and impairment in the medical certificate. For example the medical findings are the grade of paralysis, joint range of motion and muscle weakness, etc. Activities of daily living (ADL) provide the evidence of those findings and the degree of invalidity. The best practice when writing a medical certificate for physically disabled is that there must be no discrepancy between the medical opinion for the degree of invalidity and the medical findings, impairment and ADL of the patients.
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OBJECTIVE: To investigate the recognition about clinical application of "neurodevelopmental treatment (NDT)". METHOD: We surveyed on the recognition for Bobath and NDT concepts and its training programs provided by Korean Academy of Rehabilitation Medicine from Jan 2009 to Feb 2009. The survey was made for physiatrists and physical therapists (PTs), separately. One hundred twelve physiatrists and 322 PTs have participated. RESULTS: In physiatrist, interest in NDT was very high (98%), and the need for further knowledge of NDT was also high (95%). Though the NDT was mainly used techniques in neuro-rehabilitation setting, the expectation about effectiveness of it was moderate (56%) and the requirement of changing concepts of the NDT was very high (93%). PTs have carried out NDT most frequently with Bobath's concepts, but they also did not regard NDT as the best procedure. PTs emphasized the importance of their handling technique in NDT practices and also had high interest in the other maneuvers beside Bobath's. CONCLUSION: Physiatrists and PTs regard NDT as one of the most important treating method for patients with brain lesions, but it is not approved as the most effective method yet. Nowadays NDT is changing or adapting, with discarding some of the old Bobath's concepts and adding new modern scientific knowledge. Therefore we suggest that physiatrists to give PTs the revised NDT concepts and evidence based the other therapeutic methods. And the NDT needs to be verified its therapeutic efficacy with evidence based view points through proper studies.
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Humans , Brain , Handling, Psychological , Physical TherapistsABSTRACT
@# Objective To investigate the distribution of rehabilitation resources in Shenzhen.Methods 90 hospitals were investigated by making a call to know the number, personnel, field and devices of the department of rehabilitation medicine in the hospitals of Shenzhen.Results Of 90 hospitals, there were 55 hospitals (61.1%) organized the department of rehabilitation medicine, and 15 hospitals (16.7%) holding rehabilitation beds. There were 384 beds, 207 physiatrists and 110 therapists in all in Shenzhen, where values of rehabilitation devices being RMB 493000 yuans and the rehabilitation field 155.6 m2 in one hospital on average.Conclusion The number and personnel in the department of rehabilitation medicine are inadequate for 12 millions of people in Shenzhen. The distribution of rehabilitation resources is not balanced, mostly assembled in the big hospitals.
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OBJECTIVE: To investigate recognition of radiation hazard by physiatrists involving in procedure under the roentgen environment. METHOD: We did the recognition survey using 12-item self administrated questionnaire over 2 months in 2001. The questionnaires were sent to 613 physiatrists. Eighty-eight physiatrists of the 613 completed the questionnaires. RESULT: Eighty-three of 88 completed the questionnaires were performing their procedure under roentgen environment. The mean procedure time per week was 2.1 hours. Their common procedures doing under roentgen environment were as follows: swallowing videofluoroscopic study (60.2%), voiding cystourethrography (49.3%), arthrography (37.3%), epidurography 25.3%, and so on. 8.5 % of the 83 physiatric interventionists wore the radiation dosimeter and received regular assessment of radiation safety. 62.7% of the participants were wearing one piece apron, and 24.1% wore one piece apron and thyroid shield. Of the radiation related symptoms, fatigue was most common. CONCLUSION: We concluded that the special concern and education program to reduce radiation risk are required because of gradual increase of radiation exposure for physiatrists and lack about recognition of radiation exposure.