Extending Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Knowledge Abroad

As chair of the Education Committee of the International Society of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (ISPRM), Gerald Francisco, MD, is leading a global effort to ensure that rehabilitation specialists and other interested clinicians have the knowledge they need to provide quality rehabilitative care in their home countries.

Dr. Francisco is leading a global effort to ensure that rehabilitation specialists and other interested clinicians have the knowledge they need to provide quality rehabilitative care in their home countries.

“We provide online resources and courses around the world, in addition to the opportunities for education available at the ISPRM annual congress, which will be held next June in Berlin,” Dr. Francisco says. “As part of our educational efforts, we’re also developing a universal core curriculum for physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) for practitioners around the world. In the United States, the training program requirements for specialists in our field is about 30 pages long, while some countries do not even have a formal written curriculum. We’re distilling that to the essentials of PM&R to encourage commonality in our practice worldwide. Because specialists practice around the world under different conditions and with varying resources, we anticipate that the core curriculum will be expanded and modified to meet each country’s needs in defining the training requirements necessary to be identified as a specialist in PM&R.”

ISPRM is a non-governmental organization in relation with the World Health Organization. The society serves as an international umbrella organization of PM&R physicians and as a catalyst for international research in the field.