My biggest wish apart from peace and freedom for Ukraine with its impressive people is that war-traumatised patients benefit from the material on Physiopedia and that, despite their injuries and disabilities, they manage to return to the best possible version of a happy, autonomous life in the midst of their friends and families.
This article is adapted from Cornelia Barth’s original first-hand experience of teaching war trauma rehabilitation in Ukraine.
War trauma is highly complex, complicated, and unique as it affects persons of all ages, it involves all body parts and organs as well as physical and mental aspects, always in combination. They often result in sudden, permanent, complex disability. The tragic consequences and coping with such injuries caused by man-made violence demand a great deal from those affected, their families and healthcare professionals. Treating war trauma as a physiotherapist is a radical challenge.
The need for rehabilitation in Ukraine, especially for people who have experienced war trauma, has grown rapidly since the start of the conflict in 2022. In turn, the need to train rehabilitation professionals with the knowledge and skills to meet this need has become urgent. However, the teaching staff at many universities feel inadequately prepared for this very specific role.
Following a presentation at the World Physiotherapy Conference in Dubai in June 2024, Cornelia (Nel) Barth was asked by Ukrainian colleagues if she would assist them in training physiotherapy educators from multiple Ukrainian universities regarding curriculum development, teaching methods and content creation for a war trauma module for physiotherapy MSc students – as soon as possible!
Nel meeting course participants in person at a subsequent visit to Lviv and the multidisciplinary congress (photo credit: Patients of Ukraine)
With 15 years of experience working in humanitarian missions around the world while obtaining a PhD in rehabilitation in conflict and fragile health systems, Nel found the topic easy to teach but had to face unique challenges in this context. She had never been to Ukraine, did not speak the language and the education system, culture and conflict patterns are different from the areas she mainly worked in Central Africa and the Middle East. In addition, she was expected to modernise some “completely outdated teaching and treatment methods”.
Since the conflict started, Physiopedia, funded by USAID, has been creating online courses specifically for the developing need in Ukraine and translating these courses into Ukrainian. This was Nel’s solution, “the Ukrainian translations of the Physiopedia courses on rehabilitation in conflict turned out to be my lifeline” stated Nel. She was able to immediately use the resources hosted on Physiopedia Plus to optimise her own teaching time as well as encourage participants to incorporate the resources into their own lessons.
The 40-hour war trauma module that Nel designed was delivered online to the physiotherapy educators, who in turn will use the experience to incorporate war trauma training into their own teaching. Nel encouraged educators to use the online courses from Physiopedia and explore different teaching and learning methods instead of spending time searching for material. “The aim was to offer a range that the participants could adapt to their context and their respective educational requirements”, said Nel.
Nel with some of her course participants in Lviv (photo credit: Nel Barth)
Despite the extensive resources that have been made available to all rehabilitation professionals on Physiopedia Plus, there is still a huge need. “It would be great if physiotherapy experts in war trauma joined forces to create more content, for example, related to soft tissue injuries, polytrauma and blast injuries, visceral trauma, paediatric trauma, how rehabilitation can support a mental health recovery and coping after complex war trauma, sexual and gender-based violence and trauma rehabilitation” is the request from Nel. “My biggest wish apart from peace and freedom for Ukraine with its impressive people is that war-traumatized patients benefit from the material on Physiopedia and that despite their injuries and disabilities, they manage to return to the best possible version of a happy, autonomous life in the midst of their friends and families.”
