Rehab Care in Ottawa

We're your biggest fans and your loudest cheerleaders. Rehab takes time and effort, and we're here to support you along the way. At AdventHealth Ottawa our rehabilitation team works closely with your doctor to help you regain independence and get back to your life. You can get a full range of rehab care, including:

• Aquatic therapy
• Lymphedema therapy
• Occupational therapy
• Pediatric rehab
• Physical therapy
• Specialized therapies, such as pelvic floor rehab and BPPV treatment for vertigo
• Speech therapy including Fiberoptic Endoscopic Evaluation of Swallow and VitalStim
• Sports medicine services
• Wellness services
• Work-related functional assessments and ergonomic evaluations
  

When an illness or injury means you have to change the way you do things, the occupational therapists at AdventHealth Ottawa are here for you. Your therapist is trained to assess your needs and design a plan that lets you stay as independent as possible. You want to do things for yourself again, and we show you how.

Occupational therapists educate you about your condition or injury and can:

• Design treatments to improve your strength, endurance, range of motion, coordination and balance
• Give you exercises to improve your memory, perception, thinking ability and daily living skills
• Provide manual therapies — such as massage, ice and heat — to relieve pain and swelling
• Show you new ways of doing daily tasks and give you tips to make everyday activities easier
• Teach you how to use adaptive equipment for eating, bathing and other daily tasks
• Create, modify and fit a splint to position a limb properly while it heals

Physical therapy helps you move more comfortably and overcome physical limitations caused by illness, injury, aging or surgery — whether you’re training for a marathon or just want to keep up with your grandkids. Your AdventHealth Ottawa therapist creates a treatment plan that centers around what’s important to you. Our goal is to get you back to doing what you love and help you prevent future injuries.

Physical therapists use a variety of methods to help you feel better and move better. They can:

• Design personalized exercise programs to help improve muscle function, coordination, balance, endurance and mobility — including pelvic floor rehabilitation
• Educate you and your family about your condition and ways to prevent reinjury
• Help you adapt to prosthetic devices
• Produce custom foot orthotic devices
• Offer training to improve the way you walk (gait training) and move
• Show you how to retrain your muscles after an injury
• Use hands-on approaches, to relieve pain, swelling and improve tissue mobility
• Teach you how to use adaptive equipment such as a cane, walker or wheelchair
• Offer you progressive weight-bearing training during injury recovery or unweighted sports training with our Alter G treadmill or Swimex Aquatic Pool
  

If you have language difficulties or trouble speaking, eating or swallowing, speech therapy can help. Speech therapists, also called speech pathologists, are trained to help with all aspects of communicating beyond voice and pronunciation, including problem solving, memory and organizing your thoughts. Speech therapists often work with people who’ve had a stroke, brain injury or neurological condition.

The speech therapists at AdventHealth Ottawa help you overcome speech and swallowing problems through one-on-one guidance and ongoing encouragement. Your speech therapist can provide:

• Activities to improve written and verbal understanding and communication
• Assistance with thinking skills, such as memory, orientation and reasoning
• Customized exercises to build mouth and throat muscle strength for speaking and swallowing, including the use of VitalStim therapy
• Guidance to enhance verbal and nonverbal communication — including showing you how to use augmentative communication systems or devices, such as sign language or electronic devices
• Evaluation using fiberoptic endoscope for swallowing problems
  

The ergonomic and rehab experts at AdventHealth Ottawa specialize in keeping you safe at work through ergonomic assessment and work conditioning.
Ergonomic assessment is a series of evaluations that measure your physical abilities to find out if you’re able to meet the demands of a particular job.

Work conditioning shows you how to do work-related activities with good form and prepares you emotionally and psychologically to return to work.

Functional Capacity Evaluation: Matching Work with Worker
If you've been injured at work, this test measures your physical abilities by having you do the same tasks you do on the job. As you do these activities, your rehab therapist keeps a close eye on you to make sure you do things safely. The test discovers the limits of what you can do without injuring yourself. It helps determine when you can return to work and what tasks you’re able to do safely.

Pre-Work Screening: Matching the Physical Requirements to the Job
This screening discovers if your physical abilities match the demands of a particular job. Employers use this screening as part of a fair, non-discriminatory hiring process to make sure potential employees are able to do the job safely. Employees can find out what the physical requirements of a job are and whether they’re able to meet those demands — either before being hired or when returning to work after an injury.

Functional Job Analysis: Identifying and Evaluating the Work
This comprehensive process identifies and evaluates all physical aspects of a job by analyzing the worker, the work and the workplace. Employers use this analysis to find potential injury risks and ergonomic solutions to prevent on-the-job injuries.

The findings may prompt employers to redesign the workplace, offer employees additional training, or change work practices. The analysis also helps employers create pre-work screening and a functional job description.