A multidisciplinary TBI inpatient rehabilitation programme for active dutyservice members as part of a randomized clinical trial

Objective: To design and describe an effective rehabilitation programme for use in an ongoing trial on the efficacy of multidisciplinary brain injury rehabilitation for moderately head injured military service members. Design: Treatment arm of a randomized control trial. Setting: US military tertiary care hospital inpatient rehabilitation progra mme. Patients: Sixty seven active duty military with moderate to severe TBI who were randomized to the treatment arm of the protocol. Intervention: Eight week rehabilitation programme combining group and indiv idual therapies with an inpatient milieu-oriented neuropsychological focus. Group therapies included fitness, planning and organization, cognitive ski lls, work skills, medication, and milieu groups, and community re-entry out ings. Individual therapy included neuropsychology, work therapy, occupation al therapy, and speech and language pathology. Main outcome measures: Successful return to work and return to duty. Results: At 1 year follow-up, 64 patients returned to work (96%) and 66% (4 4/67) returned to duty. Conclusion: The described rehabilitation programme demonstrates one success ful effort to rehabilitate active duty military service members with TBI wh o have the potential to return to duty.