Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Rehabilitation - An International Course, 7.5 ECTS

Course start: Week 35 2013 Please note that the students are required to attend the orientation week organised from August 19 to August 23.

Course end: Week 39 2013

The course is designed for international students at the Faculty of Health Sciences at Linköping University, who wish to get a deeper knowledge on rehabilitation and share perspectives with students with other professional, cultural and social backgrounds. Disability is an interdisciplinary issue and rehabilitation practices are multi-professional, but many educational systems do not pay much attention to this. The aim of this course is to address disability and rehabilitation in an interdisciplinary perspective and to provide a comprehensive theoretical approach as a useful complement to professional educations in different disciplines within the field of rehabilitation. A distinctive feature of the course is that the group of students is accompanied by an experienced seminar leader through all lectures and literature seminars in order to support the integration of knowledge.

At the end of the course, students should be able to:
• Understand and analyze the general principles of disability and rehabilitation in any medical condition, at a societal level as well as at an individual level, and as well as encountered in a clinical situation.

• Describe definitions and models of disability, concepts, causes, terminology, classification and measurement issues.

• Understand the main principles of rehabilitation strategy and relevant examples of intervention, the rehab process and teamwork, and critique against a medical rehabilitation perspective on disability.

• Describe principles of evaluation and the concept of evidence based rehabilitation based on critical reading of scientific papers on disability and rehabilitation.

• Describe and compare specific aspects of disability, rehabilitation and results in some diagnosis or type of disability according to the individual choice of the participant.

The course will include the following important moments:
• Introductory lectures or presentations of the topics described by the learning goals, problem based learning, information retrieval, and critical reading of scientific papers.
• Literature seminars on the main topics. The seminars are based on literature studies and in part on the lectures, in order to give extensive opportunities to discuss and integrate knowledge, and to share experiences between disciplines and nationalities.
• Literature studies: In part, papers exemplifying the general principles common for all participants, and in part papers related to some specific diagnosis or type of disability according to the personal choice of the individual participant.
• Short oral presentation summarizing a choice of specific rehabilitation aspects on an individually chosen diagnosis or type of disability.

Problem-Based Learning is the pedagogical method applied at the Faculty of Health Sciences of Linköping University and during the course.
Because the content of the course is in part adapted to the choice of the individual participant, it is possible for students with very different backgrounds, e.g. audiology, medicine, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, psychology, social work, special education or speech therapy, to deepen and broaden previously acquired knowledge on disability and rehabilitation, and also to get a solid starting point for future studies at a master level.

The course is in English. The normal situation of this kind of interdisciplinary and international course is that English is not the native language of any participant. The English vocabulary and pronunciation, the experience from reading scientific papers, and the knowledge about disability terminology vary quite a lot among the participants. The seminar leader has a lot of experience from making all participants feel comfortable and discussing quite complex issues in a way that is easy to understand.
Participation in seminars is compulsory and active participation in every module is required to pass the course. The following two parts of the examination are judged by the seminar leader, with continuous feedback during the seminars and with reasonable adaptation to the specific background of the participant:

1. Active participation in the seminars, with formulation of questions, learning goals and critical reflection on the studied literature.
2. During the final week, each participant gives a short presentation to the group, summarizing a choice of specific rehabilitation aspects on an individually chosen diagnosis or type of disability, such as stroke, spinal cord injury, rheumatoid arthritis, chronic pain, visual impairment, hearing impairment, intellectual impairment, learning disabilities, work disability, etc.

Student grades will be given according to the ECTS-grading scale and will be based on the oral presentation and performance during seminars.
 

Page responsible: international@huk.liu.se
Last updated: Tue Mar 19 14:47:31 CET 2013