Passionate Medical Professionals Sharing the Knowledge of Neurological Rehabilitation

Professor Fary Khan, the Director of Rehabilitation Services at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Professor Mary Galea, Professorial Fellow in the Department of Medicine at the University of Melbourne have established the only Rehabilitation Flying Faculty in Australia.

passionate-doctors-sharing-the-knowledge-of-neurological-rehabilitation Robowalker.jpgThe Rehabilitation Flying Faculty travels to several developing countries every year to provide free face-to-face rehabilitation training. This Flying Faculty is self-funded, and only exists because of the drive and passion of these doctors, who are compelled to close the knowledge gap currently being experienced in the healthcare services in these developing countries.

However, while providing training to many people from different countries, Professor Khan mentioned that they have noticed a number of major problems. Not only is it costly and time-consuming to visit all these different places, the number of attendees is variable, as many cannot afford to travel to a central location to attend these sessions.

“What we found in the last 5-7 years that in many developing countries there is significant interest in upskilling local rehabilitation personnel and medical specialists in the rehabilitation domains such as traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, stroke and amputations. However, resources are very limited in terms of financial support for travel and access to resources. We believe on-line training and education programs are most feasible and relatively low –cost and therefore more affordable,” said Professor Khan.

Both Professors decided to work together on an online course which will be able to package the Neurological Rehabilitation course for an online setting, with a fraction of the price, which would hopefully make it accessible to a broader scope of learners from around the world, including from developing countries.

passionate-doctors-sharing-the-knowledge-of-neurological-rehabilitation - Individual hydrotherapy.jpg

“The reason we are designing this course is to assist all rehabilitation professionals around the world. A lot of our work is in the Asia Pacific region and helping our colleagues deal with problems faced by disabled persons, whether resulting from stroke, or a motor vehicle accident or whether it’s a catastrophic disaster type setting, where local staff may not always have the knowledge, access to resources or the ability to know what to do next,” said Professor Khan.

“The course is aimed at rehabilitation physicians, but also students and trainees. The content is also very useful for other health professionals, nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists. We’ve tried to cover some content of the curriculum for the trainees in rehabilitation medicine, covering a number of different topics”, explained Professor Galea.

The Neurological Rehabilitation course is all about dealing with disabilities, so for instance in the case of stroke, the course modules will guide you in revising basic knowledge as well as how to manage problems like motor dysfunction, spasticity or continence. It is a very disability-oriented, medically-driven, evidence-based approach. The information contained in this course can also be used for revision by emergency services, and disaster response services, and since it will be online, it can be accessed from anywhere in the world, anytime it is needed.

For more information about this course, please visit this link

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Mobile Learning Unit

mobile-learning@unimelb.edu.au

(03) 9035 8118

  • Rehabilitation