Das Team in der Neurorehabilitation

Neurological rehabilitation is rehabilitative therapy that is concerned with neurological patients in a multi-professional team under the leadership of a physician. The members of this interdisciplinary team work together closely with an intense exchange of knowledge and competence. This primary treatment team includes specialists in neuropsychology, speech therapy, occupational therapy and physiotherapy (including physical therapy), along with social workers and co-therapeutic nursing. Other forms of therapy may also be included. A secondary team is defined by the cooperation of the neurologist with other medical fields, e.g., neurosurgery, geriatrics, psychiatry, orthopedics and neuropediatrics. A tertiary team exists in the form of organizational cooperation between the medical und economic clinic management with insurance companies and political decision makers. Every kind of rehabilitation is basically multi-professional from an organizational viewpoint, and it is performed interdisciplinarily applying the methods of all therapeutic disciplines to create synergies. This particularly applies to neurorehabilitation, as in this field – generally following a disease or an injury to the brain as the central regulation organ – several different disorders occur in combination: sensorimotor symptoms and signs like paralysis, spasticity, dysphagia and loss of coordination; cognitive or speech disorders; or finally psychological alterations like depression or anxiety. Therefore it is particularly important that the professional team members match and coordinate their therapeutic procedures to reach common rehabilitative goals. »Multi-professional« in this context means that the representatives of the different therapeutic fields work with the patient on an advanced competency level, and »interdisciplinary« means that the members of the team work together closely with thorough cross-consultation between their disciplines. Transdisciplinary cooperation represents the highest level of team competency and includes regularly adopting the tasks and therapeutic procedures from other disciplines. All kinds of cooperation are performed under the supervision of a physician who assumes full responsibility for the rehabilitative therapy, including the prescription of medication and introduction of acute interventions, e.g., surgical procedures. This paper is only concerned with the primary – therapeutic – team. The secondary and tertiary forms of team cooperation are planned to be published separately.