Duration of the course: Sunday 2nd May to Friday 14th May 2010
Partnerships:
· Faculty of Rehabilitation Sciences, Katholieke Universitiet Leuven, Belgium.
· Dutch Institute of Allied Health Care NPI, Netherlands.
· Aquatic Therapy Section of the Association of Chartered Physiotherapists (UK).
· Australian Physiotherapy Association Aquatic Therapy Group.
· South African Society of Physiotherapy Aquatic Physiotherapy Group.
· International Halliwick Therapy Network and the Aquatic Physical Therapy Foundation.
Klinik Valens (venue)
The centre for the course was a rehabilitation center with the patients coming from all over the world for the warm water therapy and also for the rehabilitation purpose. They have a separate Neuro and Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation area of specialty with 36 physiotherapists and 16 occupational therapists working in association with various reputed doctors.
Faculty:
Johan Lambeck
Johan Lambeck & Urs GamperPhysiotherapist, owns the Halliwick-Hydrotherapy Institute. He is a senior Halliwick lecturer, co-founder of the International Halliwick Therapy Network and author of 4 books and 20 articles on Aquatic Therapy. He is a Cochrane member and co-organizer of the European Aqua Evidence Network, Katholieke Universitiet Leuven, Belgium.
Urs Gamper
Physiotherapist, Head of the Therapy Department at the internationally known rehabilitation centre in valens, Switzerland. He has 30 years of experience in aquatic therapy for adult patients with neurological, orthopedic & rheumatologic diseases. He is an author of 2 books and a CD-rom. Urs is co-founder of the International Bad Ragaz Ring Method Foundation and has a wide international teaching experience.
The Course
The course was one of its kinds in the world as it had highest contact hours with the therapeutic applications of water; total 127.7 hours with 83.7 hours in the water. The course was well organized with systematic approach enabling to develop our thought process of applying the various concepts on patients related to physiotherapy.
In the whole course we were able apply our learned concepts on 12 various Neurological & Musculoskeletal patients with treatment duration of 8 hours altogether. We were shown the evidence of the efficacy of the approach by performing outcome measure tests before and after the treatment on the patients. We could find definitive changes in the patients whom we treated in a 40 minute session. It was impressive for both the therapists & the patients to find the changes in such short duration.
The course emphasized on five concepts
· Halliwick Therapy
· Bad Ragaz Ring Method
· Aquatic Fitness
· Aqua T-relax
· Ai Chi
Though there are many concepts of treating people and patients in the water, very few are focused on therapeutic applications. All the five concepts taught at the center were oriented towards practical application on the patients and enabled us to have various techniques in tackling the problems faced by the patients related to Physiotherapy.
The advantage of treating patients in water is; because of buoyancy the weight of the body is reduced at various levels of immersion and it becomes less strenuous on the joints to perform vigorous exercises. The patient gets sufficient time to develop their balance strategies in water as he does not fall so quickly as in land. The body of the patient is available in three dimensions for the therapist to address various problems of the patient. This particular method of approach of treating patients in water is not well practiced because of lack of the required infrastructure, skilled personnel and accessibility for patients to the Therapy Pool.
