The place of rehabilitation in geriatric medicine; an overview.

Rehabilitation plays an important part in geriatric medicine. It is important to consider this in the current discussions on rehabilitation and disability medicine. The historical development of geriatric medicine and physical medicine shows similarities. Geriatric medicine has developed from a stage in which the main problem was the application of rehabilitation principles to long-stay wards containing large numbers of immobilized elderly patients, to the present, when emergency admission policies, age related policies, and joint geriatric and general medical firms are common. The attitude to rehabilitation has consequently changed from a serial, staged programme, to an holistic approach in parallel.