UCL Centre for Neurorehabilitation seminar: Dr Derick Wade

This talk will discuss the conceptual skills needed by all rehabilitation professionals to practice genuine person-centred rehabilitation and avoid the influence of the Law of the Instrument. 

 Rehabilitation is person-centred, or is it? A person is an entity defined by relationships socially with other people and groups, and physically with the environment. A person has a past and hopes for the future. A person depends on the satisfactory functioning of many organ systems to interact with their physical and social environment to achieve their goals, which are directed towards satisfying basic and higher-order motivational needs. Maladies can upset the balance of a person’s life, so they must adapt and achieve a new balance. This can be considered a very complex system. I will suggest a new perspective on rehabilitation to help you think about clinical matters.

After qualifying in 1973, Derick trained in neurology, neurosurgery, neurophysiology, and psychiatry and researched int stroke and stroke rehabilitation between 1980 and 1986 when he was appointed as Consultant in Neurological Disability at the Rivermead Rehabilitation Centre, Oxford. He took on the Ritchie Russell House Young Disabled Unit in 1988. He continued research throughout his NHS service career, working part-time as a Professor in the University of Maastricht (2011-2011) and King’s College Hospital (2006-2012). After ending his NHS post in 2016, he continued work at Oxford Brookes University, a nursing home in Gloucester, and researching, writing, and giving second opinions. He set up a rehabilitation website in 2021 (www.rehabilitationmatters.com). He is still active clinically and academically.