MEGAN GILL: My name is Megan Gill. I'm a physical therapist and I'm on the planning committee for the 2014 Mayo Clinic Neuro Summit. We invited Candy Tefertiller from Craig Hospital. She's the director of therapy services at Craig Hospital. And at the Neuro Summit she spoke about advanced technologies to advance motor learning principles for the neurologic populations, as well as health and wellness for the spinal cord population.
CANDY TEFERTILLER: Incorporating motor learning principles into the care that we provide for individuals who've sustained neurologic injuries is a really important part of the traditional rehab program. We've been very fortunate in the last five to 10 years that a significant amount of rehabilitation technology has emerged on the market that now allows us to get individuals up on their feet and moving at much sooner intervals than we had previously. We can do this in a safe way for both the individuals, as well as for our staff. So important ways to understand that utilizing advanced technologies can help us get our patients moving quicker after injury and hopefully help to develop better long-term outcomes for individuals with neurologic disability and disease.
Implementing programs that facilitate health and wellness beyond traditional rehab is really important to provide opportunities for individuals who have sustained catastrophic neurologic injuries to be able to work on health, wellness, and fitness after their in-patient rehabilitation stay. Community fitness programs often don't provide the equipment, the support, or the knowledge base to our individuals to access these programs appropriately. And I think it is important for us, as health care professionals, to provide these opportunities to maximize our patient's functional independence, long after discharge from acute rehabilitation.
