Trauma rehabilitation : Implementation and challenges

Abstract

The current state of posttraumatic rehabilitation in Germany is on the one hand shaped by the efforts of the primary care providers in the acute setting to transfer patients as soon as possible to rehabilitation in accordance with the requirement for acontinuous chain of rehabilitation. On the other hand, there are still important treatment gaps due to a lack of options, specialized structures and financing. This has the consequence that severely injured patients sometimes experience substantial difficulties, setbacks and delays on their way back to social participation. This article presents the various phases of rehabilitation and the existing challenges in order to guarantee the universally acknowledged demand for acontinuous rehabilitation chain. Reference is made to the missing structures and simultaneously to the necessary continuity of the processes, the quality assurance and the financial prerequisites for new forms of care. This is exemplified by how the continuum of posttraumatic rehabilitation of the German statutory accident insurance with the successful reintegration of trauma victims in work and social life could be amodel for insured persons of the statutory health insurance and the German pension fund. The scientific societies of trauma surgery and rehabilitation medicine also promote the model of a differentiated trauma rehabilitation and sustain the idea of atrauma rehabilitation network to increase the chances of the severely injured for the best possible quality of life and social participation.