Candy Tefertiller, PhD,
Director of Physical Therapy at Craig HospitalCandy Tefertiller, PT, DPT, ATP, NCS is the Director of Physical Therapy at Craig Hospital. Candy received a B.S in Biology from Mount Olive College in 1997 and a Master’s in Physical Therapy from East Carolina University in 2000. She then completed a Doctorate of Physical Therapy degree from Rocky Mountain Health Care University in 2008. Candy has been working in the field of neurological rehabilitation since 2000 and received an assistive technology practitioner (ATP) certification in 2005 and became a certified neurological clinical specialist (NCS) in 2007. She has been involved in numerous research projects and has focused much of her career on interventions and program development promoting recovery after neurologic injury or disease. Candy is a member of the American Physical Therapy Association and the Neurologic Section.
Contemporary Approaches with Functional Electrical Stimulation for Neurologic Rehabilitation
There has been a significant increase in the amount of rehabilitation technology available in the marketplace over the last 5-10 years. This expansion of technology has provided clinicians with the ability to provide patients with more intensive training and longer bouts of training during and after formal therapy has been completed. Along with this growth, there are many commercially available products that provide clinicians with the ability to utilize functional electrical stimulation (FES) in daily training programs as well as providing organizations with the ability to develop entire programs focused on the deployment of FES. These programs can be focused on both improving recovery after neurologic insult as well as providing novel options for maintaining health and wellness after neurologic injury or disease. This discussion will focus on contemporary approaches for implementing various types of FES technologies throughout the rehabilitation continuum including post-rehabilitation wellness facilities. Individual case studies will be reviewed demonstrating appropriate application of multiple forms of FES technologies to promote walking recovery and an overview of systematic models deploying FES technologies along the continuum of neuro-rehabilitation will also be reviewed.
