Impact of Coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak on rehabilitation services and physical rehabilitation medicine and rehabilitation physicians' activities: perspectives from the Spanish experience

Abstract

European Journal of physical and rehabilitation Medicine 2020 June;56(3):369-71 coVid-19 outbreak is a major threat now in Europe. after italy, spain is the most affected country by large. unfortunately, at this time (april 4, 2020) the spanish Government reports 11,744 deaths, 124,736 confirmed cases and 34,219 recovered cases. 57,612 patients require inpatient care and 6416 of them are located in intensive care unit (icu) at this moment.1 the impact in the health care system is thus enormous and obviously includes physical rehabilitation Medicine (prM) services around the country. in most general hospitals, a great number of rehabilitation professionals have been reassigned to emergency rooms joining multi-professional as well as multi-specialist acute care teams working with hospitalized patients. our physical medicine and rehabilitation facilities have been transformed into makeshift inpatient wards. at the same time, rehabilitation patient treatments priorities and professional/patient protection guidelines have been set following similar principles