What is a Physical Med & Rehab Speciciality? What would these PAs do specific to this speciality and where would they work?
Also, I love working with geriatrics, but I don't see a speciality for it, would it be an internal medicine speciality?
Physical Med & Rehab/ Geriatrics?
Re: Physical Med & Rehab/ Geriatrics?
No, geriatrics is a specialty of its own, although in primary care and many other specialties you work with older adults. Geriatrics is going to be HUGE with all of the baby boomers entering the retirement age bracket. The test you took probably didn't have geriatrics as an option.
PM&R is rehabilitative medicine. It's about helping people recover from musculoskeletal and neurological problems, such as spinal cord injury, stroke, traumatic musculoskeletal injuries. They also do a fair amount of pain management, since people with back problems (for example) tend to have pain that is difficult to control. This specialty is the closest to PT, with PT being the actual therapy, and PM&R being the doctoring/PAing (?) that goes with it. PM&R specialists do pain management, disability assessment, and related stuff.
The wikipedia entry probably does a better job explaining it:
PM&R is rehabilitative medicine. It's about helping people recover from musculoskeletal and neurological problems, such as spinal cord injury, stroke, traumatic musculoskeletal injuries. They also do a fair amount of pain management, since people with back problems (for example) tend to have pain that is difficult to control. This specialty is the closest to PT, with PT being the actual therapy, and PM&R being the doctoring/PAing (?) that goes with it. PM&R specialists do pain management, disability assessment, and related stuff.
The wikipedia entry probably does a better job explaining it:
Physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R), physiatry /fɨˈzaɪ.ətri/ or rehabilitation medicine, is a branch of medicine that aims to enhance and restore functional ability and quality of life to those with physical impairments or disabilities. A physician having completed training in this field is referred to as a physiatrist or rehab medicine specialist. Physiatrists specialize in restoring optimal function to people with injuries to the muscles, bones, tissues, and nervous system (such as stroke patients).