Specialized Rehabilitation Workforce Capacity and Acute Injury Management Readiness: A Tertiary Health System Competency Assessment

• Shwetambari Korde

  New Jersey Disc Center

  Author

Rehabilitation services can play an important role in curtailing long-term disability and improving functional recovery in disasters and mass casualty incidents. The potential of the Physical Therapy workforce to assist complex trauma rehabilitation in a tertiary healthcare system is assessed.  Using population statistics, regulatory workforce records, and facility-level survey data, a competency-based assessment framework was developed for Bahrain. We conducted an analysis of their workforce density, demographic characteristics, sector distribution, postgraduate qualifications, and specialization profiles. The results show significant deficiencies in advanced rehabilitation readiness. For example, the physical therapist density is only 1.7/10,000 population, along with 19% post-graduate specialization coverage. Orthopedics was the largest specialist group, and disaster-relevant areas, including neurological rehab, burn care, amputation rehab, and acute trauma, were underdeveloped. The assessment also recognized a reliance on expatriate clinicians and a lack of inclusion of rehabilitation professionals in disaster preparedness planning. Reinforcing postgraduate education and extending specialized training pathways, alongside enhancement of workforce planning and the formal inclusion of Physical Therapists in the emergency response systems, will yield a more resilient health system and ensure rehabilitation service delivery during future emergencies.

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