All about rehabilitation

Rehabilitation Matters

About all rehabilitation

This site is unashamedly evangelical about rehabilitation, its importance to patients and their families, its never-ending fascination, and its intellectual, philosophical, ethical, and emotional challenges. It is a personal website that expresses a personal view of rehabilitation, based on over 40 years of experience, research, writing, and, most of all, thoughtful consideration. It is based on evidence, not afraid to challenge orthodox beliefs where they need to be challenged, and, I hope, interesting.

Overview of Rehabilitation Matters

This site is for everyone interested in rehabilitation, from experts to those with no prior knowledge, from rehabilitation professionals and other healthcare workers to politicians, patients, and the public, from those who pay for services to those who provide them, and, above all, it is for people who are curious about rehabilitation.

This site concerns all healthcare rehabilitation regardless of age, setting, or condition. Although my main interest is in neurology, the content considers all conditions, including psychiatry, visual and hearing impairments, functional disorders, and drug and alcohol rehabilitation.

So, as the strapline says, this site is all about rehabilitation and about all rehabilitation. The figure below outlines the main sections.

Unique focus

I am unaware of any other sites centred on rehabilitation. Academic journals, such as Clinical Rehabilitation (which I edited) and Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, publish articles on specific topics. Sites such as the British Society of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine or the Society for Research in Rehabilitation have a particular focus (medical aspects or research). Textbooks, such as the Oxford Handbook of Rehabilitation Medicine, have chapters on various topics, but rarely discuss the rehabilitation process.

The content will inevitably reflect my philosophy and approach. I believe rehabilitation must be centred on the person, always consider longer-term social goals, and that rehabilitation professionals need to develop wisdom, which is the best way to respond to the many uncertainties and complexities associated with many of our patients. We must remain humane, remembering that patients are people.

Everyone must consider the philosophical, legal, and ethical challenges related to rehabilitation. For instance, what are the differences between disease, disability, sickness, and illness, or, equally important, what is rehabilitation? Ethical questions arise daily, such as when considering people with prolonged disorders of consciousness or functional disorders.

I give more details in the About section.

Who should read it and why?

Everyone! Most people ask, “What is rehabilitation?” The site should answer this question, whether you are a patient recently offered rehabilitation, a politician or policymaker, or simply someone curious.

Professionals involved in rehabilitation should find much to interest and educate them. I challenge common assumptions, explain complex concepts, and present facts and arguments they can use when promoting rehabilitation. I am especially keen on education and training. I have created a curriculum and syllabus suitable for all professions. It fosters expertise in rehabilitation as a complement to their existing knowledge and skills. My approach stems from my involvement in developing the medical rehabilitation curriculum and should engage students and anyone training in rehabilitation.

Service managers and policy makers, because their understanding of and commitment to rehabilitation are crucial. I discuss person-centred rehabilitation on several pages and posts, emphasising that organisational support is vital. The team’s ability to be person-centred can be severely constrained by unsuitable budgetary or management frameworks.

Furthermore, rehabilitation should be a collaborative, cross-boundary enterprise, rather than a competitive matter, shifting responsibility to other parties. For example, high-level funders and policymakers should actively support rehabilitation networks.

Healthcare professionals, including all managers, should read to gain insight into rehabilitation. A better understanding of rehabilitation is needed throughout the healthcare system, as many patients would benefit from rehabilitation but are not referred. The site has information on the role of nursing homes in rehabilitation. Social Service professionals will also find much of interest, as social care is indistinguishable from rehabilitation.

Patients, their families and friends will also learn a great deal about rehabilitation. The content avoids jargon where possible and explains complex ideas clearly. Additionally, a section is dedicated to the patient and the public, which I hope will also engage healthcare professionals.

Newly published: November 11, 2025 to January 29, 2026

At the end of 2025, I was unusually busy clinically, travelling, and giving a lecture. However, I have managed to write some pages and posts and update existing ones.

One issue addressed in several posts and pages concerns neurological rehabilitation. In the UK, training in medical subspecialities is no longer supported for good reasons, so there is no recognised qualification to demonstrate neurological expertise. My first post discussed training in rehabilitation, asking specifically what was needed for neurological rehabilitation. I review the features of rehabilitation and the training needed to acquire them. I highlight the central role of rehabilitation thinking. This led me to consider high-level outcomes and the generic and specialist capabilities needed. I then considered how to supplement rehabilitation expertise with neurological expertise. I conclude that professionals and services are always responsible for ensuring they have the knowledge and skills needed for their caseload.

This led me to publish a page titled “Neurological rehabilitation: what specialist expertise is needed?” This discusses the balance between specialisation and the need to have a holistic approach and generalisable skills. I conclude that rehabilitation is the same in neurologically-disabled patients but that the nature and complexity of the problems associated with neurological disease meant that specific additional expertise was needed.

I addressed the question of which specific expertise is needed on a page titled “Rehabilitation Neurology Capabilities.” I suggest four high-level capabilities that would help someone to develop a credential in neurology for rehabilitation. Although the focus is on neurological disease, I suggest that a credential is equally essential for all team members.

My most unlikely-titled post was “Relational Quantum Mechanics and Rehabilitation.” I have a lifelong interest in physics, and this post was prompted by a parallel between two ideas. Physical reality is generated by and founded on events, not objects, and I suggest that human social reality is similarly based on events (interactions with other people) rather than on some intrinsic ‘personality’ resident in the brain.

Two other posts could be described as philosophical. The first is on biopsychosocial disequilibrium and relates to an earlier post on malady. Essentially, I suggest that just as a biomedical illness arises from a physiological disequilibrium, a person’s ill-health may arise from a biopsychosocial disequilibrium. Biomedical illness is a part of this, but it also explains ill-health arising from poverty, psychological trauma, and many other factors that do not directly damage the body.

The second concerns the concept of diagnosis and is a companion to a post published in early 2024 or earlier; it is titled “What is a diagnosis?” Part 2. The post suggests moving away from a single diagnostic label for everyone and embracing the multi-axial approach used in psychiatry, leading to a formulation.