How to Prepare for Meeting Your Rehabilitation Team

Your rehabilitation team is the group of people who will be by your side as you recover from surgery and help guide you through what you need to do to rebuild into life with a prosthetic leg.  

Your rehabilitation team will be put together depending on your particular set of circumstances and needs. The kinds of professionals in these teams include nursing staff, doctors, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and psychologists. You can read more about each of these professions, here. 

Unless your amputation is an emergency procedure, you may have an opportunity to meet with the people in your rehabilitation team before your surgery. Depending on where you are being treated, you may meet this team one by one, or in a group. Whatever the format, this is a great opportunity to make a connection with the people who are going to be an important part of your life for a while and to ask all the questions you need.  

Preparing for meeting members of your rehabilitation team 

The most important person in this whole process is…you! The quality and pace of your emotional and physical rehabilitation really depends on your focus and efforts.  

One of the ways you can empower yourself is to prepare well for meeting the members of your rehabilitation team. While we understand not everyone has this opportunity (for example if you have an emergency procedure), if you can, it’s so beneficial to do. You will reap the rewards of equipping yourself with the information and knowledge you need about what’s going to happen and what you can do to give yourself the best chance of a strong recovery.   

A good way to prepare for this meeting is to sit with the people who are closest to you – family and friends – and write down any questions you have, any worries you want to talk about and anything else that you would like to cover in the meeting. And don’t forget to bring the questions to the meeting so you can make sure you get through all the things on your mind. It’s also a good idea to have someone close to you to come with you and either record the meeting or take notes so you can refer back to the answers over time.  

Hopefully you will leave this meeting with a better idea of what comes next in your amputation journey and feeling empowered and supported.