Rehabilitation Medicine

The physiotherapy room was first installed with the opening of the hospital in 1972, promoted in 1976 to be the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, and has continued to provide cares for patients as well as the student and resident education. In 1995, the Guri Hospital was opened, and the medical treatment and education are currently being conducted in two locations. The department strives to recuperating physical, psychological, social, occupational, and economical abilities of the physically-disabled patients. In addition, various consultations and research are being progressed through clinics such as disc clinic, osteoarthritis clinic, foot deformity clinic, ankylosing spondylitis clinic, pain clinic. An American physician, Doctor Rusk pointed out the importance of the rehabilitation medicine claiming that after the prevention medicine and treatment medicine as primary and secondary medicine, the rehabilitation medicine is the tertiary medicine, and the three types of medicine take up a side of a regular triangle respectively. Medicine can largely be divided into primary, secondary, and tertiary. The aim of the primary medicine is to keep people from becoming ill or getting injured by preventing the disease before its occurrence. That is, to prevent disease by exercising regularly, getting vaccinated, improving pollutions. Despite the efforts to prevent the disease, when it occurs, the secondary medicine focuses on finding the cause of the disease and treating the illness accordingly. The secondary medicine is referred to as the treatment medicine, and includes divisions such as internal medicine, external medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics. However, despite the appropriate treatments conducted in the secondary medicine, complications may arise inevitably. The rehabilitation medicine aims to prevent such complications from progressing and help patients properly function in their daily lives. The department strives to educate the students on the basic concepts of the rehabilitation medicine and to provide students with the opportunities to get accustomed to patient-diagnosing, physiotherapy, speech therapy process, patient check-up, skills, through clinical training where the students actually participate in the medical consultation themselves.