The personal experience of brain injury specialist rehabilitation is unique for each person. Brain injury specialist rehabilitation enables the person to work on achieving goals that are meaningful to them. The person works on the specific areas that are relevant and may include physical difficulty, thinking or cognitive processing, perception, social skills and relationships and goals meaningful to them that enable returning to work, getting about in the community, and adjusting to changes the person may experience following a brain injury.
This pathway is unique for every person with a brain injury.
The goal is for the person to be independent as they possibly can.
To understand the person's recovery and rehabilitation outcomes pathway, it is important to understand:
- their life before the injury
- the injury and the impairments it causes
- the wide impacts caused by the impairments
- the recovery and rehabilitation pathway for achieving outcomes to address the impairments and impacts, including surviving, relearning skills, returning to school and work and reconnecting with community.
Figure 1: Personal outcomes pathway
Life before the injury
The injury
Getting immediate help
Emergency
Ambulance, emergency department
Surviving
Acute
Neurosurgery, intensive care, inpatient therapy
Re-learning skills
Hospital rehabilitation, transitional living
Brain injury or general rehabilitation unit
Planning
Discharge planning
Assessments, care planning, funding management, case management
Back into the community
Living in community
Support services, case management
Continuing to re-learn
In the community with rehabilitation
Supported accommodation, outpatient services, case management
Living in the community
In community for life
Community services, case management, schools, workplaces