The importance of a holistic approach to rehabilitation programmes

The goals of any rehabilitation programme are to reduce pain, to prevent further injury, to enhance tissue healing, to restore muscle strength, endurance and proprioception and to return the patient to normal function. Rehabilitation is as important as treatment of the original injury, but detailed rehabilitation programmes can be daunting to provide and even more challenging to follow. An approach that considers all aspects of rehabilitation, i.e. the patient, the circumstances and the owner, will have the most chance of success and should be a team effort. The most common reason to create a rehabilitation programme is musculoskeletal injury and the basis of any rehabilitation programme is a correct diagnosis. Knowledge of the location, severity and stage of healing of the injury is essential to create a directed rehabilitation programme, but the focus should remain on the patient as a whole. Complex and/or multilimb injuries should be identified and taken into consideration ...