Rehabilitation protocols are no substitute for imagination, writes Christopher Ward. Plus letters from Annie Coombs and Elaine Yeo
How refreshing to hear a GP recognising that recovering from illness may depend on going “off-piste”, leaving “the well-trimmed paths of textbook solutions” in favour of “something wilder, more unscripted and perhaps more effective” (‘We need to respect the process of healing’: a GP on the overlooked art of recovery, 4 January).
My perspective is hospital medicine and surgery, in which many patients never reach their potential after illness. NHS trusts, eager to empty beds, often invest in specialist rehabilitation units where a small proportion of patients with especially complex needs are put through multi-disciplinary, goal-directed programmes. The vast majority of ill people, by contrast, are hurried home in the expectation that spontaneous healing will somehow work its magic.
