Insight

After being assaulted in 1998, Dean Harding’s life was turned upside down. Years of rehabilitation followed to help him cope with his traumatic brain injury. But the world of work seemed a place he would never return to, believing that he “wasn’t capable”.

However, the birth of his son 17 years later changed his whole outlook on life.

“I didn't want him growing up thinking, ‘why isn't my dad working?’,” remembers Dean.

“Most people work, or they’re supposed to. It gives me a sense of feeling like a ‘normal’ person, although I've still got my disabilities.”

“I was hearing the same story over and over again,” says neuropsychologist Dr Sherrie Baehr. “It was one of isolation, sadness and loss of direction.” These accounts came from brain injury survivors who, with depressing regularity, told Sherrie how society was rejecting them post-injury. After one such tale too many, she decided to take affirmative action by launching a charity that enables people with brain injuries to help themselves by helping others.

Byron Konizi wants to do away with the word ‘rehabilitation’. He believes he has a better term for brain injury recovery. But this is no lexical whimsy. His conclusion comes after a decades-long journey into the world of neurological treatment, to the brink of death and back again. It started with a bike ride at age six that sent him freewheeling onto another life trajectory. He fell off, sustaining a head injury - the first in a series of traumatic brain experiences in his life. These dark chapters have shaped a new organisation that wants to bring about a post-brain injury revolution in the UK.

Swedish innovation the Mollii Suit is helping neuro- rehab patients with a range of conditions to regain lost functions and boost their quality of life, as Richard Welch explains here.

I recently read an article in a British Safety Council publication referencing HSE annual statistics noting that prosecutions for health and safety breaches were at a record low, with 2018/19 prosecutions down by 23 per cent from 2017/18 numbers, and more than a third since 2014/15. Concern was expressed that some employers were prepared to ignore health and safety laws believing that they would never be “caught”. Whilst it has always been the case that some element of employers are prepared to flout health and safety regulations for profit, or simply through recklessness, the concern is whether the proportion prepared to ignore these laws is growing or decreasing; whether the trend is going in the right direction.

Deborah Backus is navigating rush hour traffic when she takes a cross-Atlantic call from NR Times. She’s understandably busy. The organisation she oversees is about to host the biggest rehab research event on the planet. But president of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM ) is just one hat she wears.

We all know that taking exercise has both physical and mental health benefits. Staying active is easy for some, and not so easy for others. The current campaign run by the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy is “Love activity, Hate exercise”. Taking this principle we try to prompt and increase where possible, general activity for all our patients at our St Neots neurological service. For some this may be encouraging them to be more involved on the ward generally, in group activities or on outings. For the more physically able patients, we were looking for a fun way to engage and push them outside their comfort zone to see if this could potentially improve their function or mobility.rehab opportunities when they had a gold standard idea...

Cygnet Pindar House, in Barnsley, will have 22 beds for men with neurological conditions and acquired brain injuries. It is specifically for those cases which result in challenging behaviour requiring professional support in an appropriate setting. The facility is the latest addition to Cygnet Health Care’s portfolio and has been purpose built to provide a clinically-led, evidence-based neuropsychiatric pathway for service users. With the aim of minimising challenging behaviour while encouraging individuals to maximise their independence, the unit represents a significant step forward in increasing national provision in this highly specialist area of care.

A medico-legal expert’s duty is to the Court. They have a duty to be independent. They should have this duty at the forefront of their mind when carrying out their assessment(s) and when preparing their report(s). An expert’s evidence will be completely undermined if it transpires that they are saying what the party who is paying them wants to say unless that is their genuine view. It should go without saying that experts should be courteous to the Claimant and their families both during the assessment and in the report. There is an increase in Claimants seeking to record expert assessments either covertly or overtly.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-GiDOXvU-c Cambridgeshire dad Jason was on holiday in Portugal in 2012 when his life changed forever. A car hit him during an early morning bike ride, breaking his back, legs and ribs and severing his spine. Jason, from Littleport, received treatment for three weeks in Lisbon, before being moved to Cambridge. He then spent a further three months at Northern General Hospital in Sheffield. Here specialists gave him the devastating news that he would never walk again. Jason and his family contacted Irwin Mitchell’s specialist serious injury solicitors about making a claim to help fund his ongoing care needs.