A Therapist's Guide to Acute Care Rehabilitation

The Society of Critical Care Medicine includes physical therapists as an essential part of the health care team for all critical care units. A true understanding of the function and mechanics of critical care devices and the implication for therapeutic intervention is essential (Ciesla, Murdock, 2000). Many ICU patients are initially prescribed bedrest or are reportedly limited in mobility by various lines and monitoring devices. Reportedly 1.3-3% of muscle strength may be lost inone week and up to 10% reduction in postural strength can occur in one week with healthy volunteers. This workshop will provide a refresher on identification, indication, and functions of common ICU monitors, tubes, lines, and airway delivery devices as well as considerations while providing therapeutic interventions to safely, confidently and effectively mobilize these patients. Attendees will learn these skills via identification and discussion of devices, learning stories, and actual patient case review. Immediately upon your return to the bedside, you will be more confident in treating critically ill patients, discussing considerations to plan of care collaboratively, and will have improved documentation to justify your recommendations for next levels of care based on outcome measures and patient's physiologic response to interventions.

Target Audience: Physical Therapists, Physical Therapist Assistants, Occupational Therapists, Occupational Therapy Assistants

Highlights

• Immediately improve your comfort treating and mobilizing critically ill patients allowing you to maximize your patient's functional AND medical progression
• Effective, evidence-based guidelines for guiding critical decision making when treating critically ill patients
• Improve documentation via discussion of functional outcome measures as well as methods for monitoring and assessing patients' activitytolerance and response to intervention
• Strategies for interprofessional collaboration withother bedside staff and physicians with refreshers on use of clinical decision-making tools maximizing collaborative effort to provide individualizedtreatment and monitoring