Abstract
In my final lecture, I have looked back the history of rehabilitation service in Juntendo Hospital. Rehabilitation service was started as early as 1947, and was subordinated under the Department of Orthopedic Surgery. In 1972, the then Professor of Neurology started another physiotherapy room mainly for neurological diseases. The Department of Rehabilitation Medicine was inaugurated in 2003 and I became head of the department. At that time, Juntendo Hospital had already enjoyed therapist-centered service for 56 years. One of my objectives was to build a sound cooperation between their service and the new physician-centered service. The other objective was to establish the attitude among all therapists to generate evidence in rehabilitation service. After my eleven years’ work in Juntendo, I have noticed that the demand for rehabilitation service is increasing steadily for patients with many diseases other than neurological disorders. In 2015, we are engaging in many multi-disciplinary activities in our hospital, such as participation in the skeletal related events (SRE) team, rehabilitation for pediatric patients, and rehabilitation for cardiac patients. Along with the advance in medicine, rehabilitation physicians and therapists need to continue to make efforts to develop and establish novel therapeutic skills in cooperation with each specialist in medicine. When I review the history and the trend of rehabilitation service in Juntendo, it is obvious that our task is to provide rehabilitation service to meet the growing demands from different medical specialties.
