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Article
Health and Justice: Value of Rehabilitation and Scope of Liability of Rehabilitation Workers
Author(s)
Albert Lee
Full-Text PDF XML 840 Views
DOI:10.17265/1548-6605/2020.05.002
Affiliation(s)
The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Shatin, Hong Kong
ABSTRACT
Rehabilitation is now covering
a wider perspective to include any visceral disabilities which would include chronic
illnesses including mental health, not only restricted to physical injuries. Rehabilitation
can now be regarded as tertiary prevention, prevention of complications and further
deterioration of existing chronic condition and restoration of usual functional
capacity as far as possible; and quaternary prevention, prevention of complications
of medical interventions. The scope of rehabilitative services is not only in the
hands of particular specialties and healthcare professionals, to allow wider accessibility
and affordability in achieving equity in health. Self-management and self-care,
and patient empowerment programmes now also play an important part in rehabilitation,
and the providers would go beyond the main stream healthcare professionals, such as physicians, nurses, physical therapists, and medical social workers. Introducing the concept of community
health practitioners with basic training in health would play a critical role in
supporting self-management, self-care, and empowerment which would
be very time-consuming and costly if only relied on the main stream
healthcare professionals. Revisitation of the concept of duty of
care and definition of reasonable standard of care is warranted for the community
health practitioners, so they have better understanding their scope of liability.
As rehabilitation is a long term process, it is more than the physical process of
treatment. Psychosocial rehabilitation is very much needed to support the patients
and care-givers to manage the chronic conditions in community setting.
This paper will discuss the credentials of community health practitioners and the
issue of liability involved in rehabilitation particularly in community setting. This would enable them to play a greater role to fill
in the gaps of services which might not be fully covered by the main stream healthcare
professionals. Chronic illnesses now pose greatest health burden globally and the
value of rehabilitation should cover wider perspective of health to address the
needs of care in community. Universal health coverage should include community-based rehabilitation to focus on addressing the psychosocial
perception and self-efficacy in chronic disease management in achieving justice
and equity in health.
KEYWORDS
community-based rehabilitation, health equity, health justice, community health practitioners, standard of care, liability
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