Abstract:

Ultimately, we observe a rapid development of geriatric rehabilitation, due to the increased life expectancy and the augmented relative proportion of elderly and old people in the population, including in the European Union and in our country.

The goal of the current study is the creation of educational materials on the topic "Geriatric rehabilitation", and the evaluation of its impact on the professional competencies of the medical staff.

During the last years, we prepared a proposal for a national consensus on geriatric rehabilitation, accepted and signed by our country's leading specialists in Physical and rehabilitation medicine (PRM). In the educational materials on geriatric rehabilitation, we included basic principles of these recommendations: functional assessment and complex rehabilitation program, with a synergic combination of traditional and modern rehabilitation methods (physical activity, exercises, functional electrostimulations, TENS, laser). Special attention was paid to sarcopenia, cachexia and frailty – definitions, etiology, pathophysiology, impact on autonomy and on quality of life of patients, and the potential of physical factors for prevention and treatment of these conditions. We included information on the state-of-the-art of geriatric rehabilitation and the future perspectives for its development, such as robots and virtual reality.

We created an electronic repository with the educational materials (free of charge for learners), and we applied these educational materials in the process of university learning and during the long-life learning courses of the rehabilitation team: medical doctors (general practitioners, PRM-specialists and trainees), nurses, physiotherapists, medical assistants. The evaluation of their professional competencies (theoretical knowledge and practical skills) demonstrates the efficacy of the application of our electronic repository with educational materials on the topic “Geriatric rehabilitation”.

Keywords:

Geriatric rehabilitation, sarcopenia, frailty, electronic repository, education, physical medicine.