Welcome

Thanks to the 500+ walkers, runners, rollers, sponsors and volunteers who participated in our first Run Walk & Roll on May 30!     Read more about participants such as Nathan Baker (left).

Welcome to the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Our mission is to optimize health and function of individuals with disabilities through a patient-centered continuum of care, with the goal of improving quality of life. We invite you to browse our web site and learn more about our patients!

Who We Are

Our faculty are doctors and psychologists in rehabilitation medicine who provide clinical care, teaching, research and advocacy primarily in North Carolina, but also through outreach to benefit rehabilitation patients worldwide.

Our Team Approach

Our rehabilitation doctors, also called physiatrists, manage care through an interdisciplinary rehabilitation team of colleagues from UNC Health Care and other departments. For example, our physiatrists regularly prescribe physical, occupational, speech and recreational therapy, and monitor that therapy over time. They attend care conferences with nurses, social workers, care managers, therapists and other specialists to let the patient and family ask questions and make important decisions.

The UNC Advantage

Our patients benefit from the wider interdisciplinary team, and also from immediate access to the university's full range of medical resources. Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation is proud to join other programs at UNC in exceeding national standards.

Our Local & Global Partnerships

Highlights of our local and global initiatives include the following:

• Our faculty members and staff continue to improve rehabilitation care locally and globally through support, education, research and technology, expanding UNC's rehabilitation resources to individuals and families.
  
• In March 2009 we visited the Regional Hospital of Trujillo, Peru, for a two-week mission. Department Chair Michael Y. Lee, MD, MHA and two members of our residency program introduced rehabilitation medicine to this region of the world. By training and working with doctors from the international perspective, we also gain knowledge to benefit patients right here in North Carolina.
  

• Our international visiting scholars program has hosted faculty from Slovenia, Colombia, Brazil, Japan and Korea.
  

How You Can Help

In order to grow in this exciting direction, our team of professionals seeks your ideas and support. Please let us know how you would like to give rehabilitation medicine to others. We also encourage your feedback as we build our web site to include more resources, helpful links and other topics of interest.