Channel 12 health reporter, Liz Bonis, interviews Dr. Angela Stillwagon, Spinal Cord Program Director and spinal cord program champions Christie Mauch, PT and Kari Hellman, OT, to increase awareness of spinal cord injury and the importance of rehabilitation for recovery, sharing what patients experience at Encompass Health of Cincinnati. “Occupation of daily living is basically any type of self-care – anything that you do around your home or the workplace that gives you better quality of life – and we work on getting [our patients] as independent as possible in those things,” said Kari Hellman, occupational therapist.

Encompass Health physical medical rehab physician Dr. Angela Stillwagon said, “Usually when patients come to us, we are working on trying to get them started in their journey of recovery. We work with them three hours a day, with physical occupational and maybe speech therapy and try to get that recovery process started and try [to help them] to be as independent as possible.” She added, “Every person is different, and they present a little differently. Sometimes we have to think outside of the box on how to help them with some of these [daily] functions, such as brushing their teeth and combing their hair, and we have adaptive equipment we can use.”

Source: WKRC