What is the Shriners Hospital approach to pediatric rehabilitation?

One of the things we think is so important about pediatric rehabilitation is that our focus is very family-centered. It's important to focus on the child who sustains the spinal cord injury, but it's equally important to focus on the entire family system, because everyone is affected when someone sustains spinal cord injury. So, we think in pediatric rehabilitation, the specialized care that you get for the child, who sustains the injury, as well as for the entire family, is critical to the adjustment process. One of the other things that we think is so important in pediatric rehab is the ability to have parents who have a child with a spinal cord injury connect with other parents in similar situations. For those parents, the ability to come together, to share their stories, to tell each other how they're doing and to provide an internal support group is incredibly important, and really helps them as parents to adjust to the injury. Equally as important, is for the child who sustains the injury to be in a place where they can look around and see a lot of other children and adolescents who have also sustained injuries, and are at different points of their adjustment. To be able to meet somebody who is similar to you with a spinal cord injury is important, and to be able to look at one of those kids as a peer or a role model of where you might be in six months as you get through your rehabilitation, can truly make all the difference in adjustment to Spinal Cord Injury, (spinal-cord injury).