1. Physical Therapy in an
Acute Care Hospital
Practice Setting Presentation
By Andy Coleman
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2. What is Acute Care?
The period of time or pattern of specialized health
care during which a patient is treated for severe
injury or illness, trauma, or during recovery from
surgery
Highly specialized
http://www.ehow.com/about_5195079_definition-hospital-acute-care.html
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3. What is Acute Care?
Many hospitals are acute care facilities with the
intention of discharging patients as soon as they are
deemed healthy and stable
Acute Care vs. Long Term Acute Care
Growing need for acute care facilities
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/acute_care 3

4. What About Physical Therapy?
• Relatively new idea
• Increasing awareness of the need
– Much more common to have a Physical Therapy
department in an acute care facility than it was 10
years ago
• Huge benefits to having Physical Therapy prior
to recovering
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5. So What Is It?
• Early ambulation
• General strength training
• Help with balance and coordination
• Transfer training
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6. Benefits of Physical Therapy
in Acute Care
• Keep muscles from deteriorating
• Faster recovery time
• More complete recovery
• Patients have fewer complications
– Bedsores
– Deep vein thrombosis
– Loss of bone mass
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7. What Types of Patients Will I See?
• Orthopedic patients (Primarily)
– Total hips
– Total knees
– Fractures
• Neurological patients
– Strokes
• Cardiac Disorders
– MI patients
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8. How Much Time In Each System
• Musculoskeletal System = 44%
• Neuromuscular System = 26.4%
• Cardiopulmonary System = 19.2%
• Integumentary System = 10.4%
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9. Information and Statistics
• Median Salary is $49,000
• 12.1% of PTA’s work in Acute Care
• 52% of time is spent on patient management
• 13.6% of time is spent on Administration
• 51.8% of patients are older persons
• 38.6% of patients are adults
• 13.6% of patients are joint replacement
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10. Acute Care Section of the APTA
• Strategic Plan
– Goals and Objectives
• Resources available
– Lab Values Interpretation
– John’s Hopkins Hospital Functional Acute Care
Score Information
• Cardiovascular Monitoring Guidelines
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11. References
• http://www.acutept.org
• http://www.apta.org
• http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/acute_care
• http://www.experts123.com/q/is-there-any-history-
of-occupational-therapy-in-acute-care-setting.html
• http://www.ehow.com/about_5195079_definition-
hospital-acute-care.html
• Personal communication: K. Norberg 09/30/2009;
11/01/2009
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