The rehabilitation profession offers a variety of areas to consider when it comes to applying and using one’s knowledge, training, and skills – whether you are long time professional, a relative newcomer to the profession, or a student who is preparing to enter the profession. Many choose to work principally in one broad emphasis area; others choose to work based on their interest or skills – such as counseling, case management, placement, disability management, expert witness and several others.
The point is that the rehabilitation profession offers many opportunities and an individual may choose from any number of alternatives as to the direction he or she wishes to pursue. Many will enter private rehabilitation; others will choose the public sector. Many of those who choose private rehabilitation will choose to combine several different areas or emphases and will call on a variety of interests and skills, and they will take different roads, different directions at various times in their professional lives.
Today, rehabilitation includes a much greater variety with many different goals and objectives – today our rehabilitation professionals are involved in workers’ compensation, forensics, life care planning, expert witness, Social Security Disability, disability management, education, counseling, psychology, evaluation and diagnostic services, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, elder care, law, and the managing, staffing, directing, and owning of rehabilitation facilities – or a combination of several of these and so much more!
It is also up to each of us to let others know about our education, training, experience, continuing education, and various other activities that make us well qualified, highly professional, and very ethical rehabilitation/healthcare professionals. And it also up to each of us to make certain that we remain educated, trained, and ethical, and we do this through many different ways including pursuing further advanced degrees, attending continuing education courses and programs, by supporting professional associations and organizations through membership and leadership, and through professional networking in order to learn from each other and to share those experiences that make us all better.
Regardless of the area(s) in which one works, essential rehabilitation knowledge and skills are important and remain so – including interviewing skills, case management, counseling, evaluation, investigative skills, vocational assessment, job seeking skills, placement, follow-up, and many others. Today’s technological world is going to continue to mandate some changes in all fields of employment – including the rehabilitation arena.
We hope this All Day Seminar will add to your knowledge and skills and will give you thought to possible changes that you might wish to make in your own professional life – whether it is as an individual practitioner, professional employee of a larger firm (case management, insurance, third party administrator, life care planning, law firm, etc.), public employee, member of a rehabilitation