Approach to Learning

 Medical Knowledge and Patient Care

As a fellow, you will:

• Devote 9 of the 12 months of this fellowship developing expertise in the clinical management of patients undergoing in- and outpatient rehabilitation after stroke, brain injury and other neurologic diseases.
• Develop a sophisticated understanding of salient issues in the acute management of patients with these conditions.
• Gain expertise in traditional and newer rehabilitation modalities and in the management of medical comorbidities and complications of patients undergoing rehabilitation in the context of neurologic impairment.
• Become knowledgeable regarding standard rehabilitation and neurologic outcomes assessment tools and their clinical and research uses.

Interpersonal and Communication Skills

As a fellow, you will:

• Develop clinical team leadership skills and the ability to interact with patients and families in a compassionate and effective manner.
• Learn to discuss medical issues with patients and families in ways respectful of their level of medical knowledge.
• Become a skilled leader of program team meetings and family conferences.
• Learn what each member of the rehabilitation team contributes to patient care.
• Become skilled in engaging all in the common enterprise of delivering optimal patient care.

Professionalism

As a fellow, you will:

• Demonstrate consistent timely completion of required clinical documentation.
• Address, clinical and other requests and issues from clinical staff, patients and families to in a thorough and timely manner.
• Obtain and document consent for all procedures.
• Exhibit sensitivity to cultural and ethnic differences.

Practice Based learning and Improvement

As a fellow, you will:

• Identify and present teaching cases at rotation based conferences and rounds.
• Use online and library resources to research clinical and patient questions and position these investigations as teaching exercises for other members of the clinical team.
• Inform research projects with issues encountered in clinical practice.

Systems Based Practice

As a fellow, you will:

• Learn the differences among the several levels of post-acute care in the Partners system, and how to triage patients to the most appropriate level.
• Communicate frequently with referring physicians and hospitals to maximize patient care and to create complete and clear handoff documents for the next level of care.
• Attend program management meetings for the Stroke and Brain Injury programs at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital to gain an understanding of program development issues and constraints.