Education and development of rehabilitation therapy in China under the background of aging.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that about one-third of people worldwide currently have a need for rehabilitation. This demand is expected to increase in the coming years due to changes in population health and characteristics. For example, with the intensification of global aging, the rehabilitation needs of patients with chronic diseases and disabilities, postoperative dysfunction, and cognitive impairment continue to grow, and emergencies such as conflicts, disasters, and epidemics may lead to a surge in rehabilitation needs. Early and sustained rehabilitation could reduce complications, improve function, and reduce disability in affected populations, but rehabilitation services are often underestimated due to underfunding and poor short-term outcomes. WHO sees rehabilitation as an essential part of achieving universal health coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals. With the development of China's economy and society and the trend of an aging population, the demand for rehabilitation therapists is growing rapidly. Since the development of rehabilitation education in China at the beginning of this century, great progress has been made in both the training mode and the number of people trained, especially in the construction of higher education of rehabilitation in related colleges and universities. Through descriptive qualitative analysis, this study collected information from national policy documents and official websites of colleges and universities on policies concerning degree systems, cultivating goals and ideas, courses, education internationalization, continuing education in practice, standardized training after graduation, the number of colleges and universities with rehabilitation therapy related majors in China, and summarizes the current situation of the development of rehabilitation personnel education in Chinese colleges and universities. Judging from the results, during the development of rehabilitation education, China has continuously improved in terms of policy support, educational goals and concepts, the number and quality of institutions, degree systems, and internationalization, while gradually adapting to China's development status. This also provides direction and feasible suggestions for China to improve the rehabilitation education development system and formulate a national rehabilitation education plan in the future to deal with the challenge of aging.

Study on the Rehabilitation Therapist Estimation Under Institutional Perspective by Applying the Workload Indicators of Staffing Needs in the Aging Context.

Background: The need for rehabilitation therapy has increased dramatically with the aging of the population, the prevalence of non-communicable diseases, and the increase in the number of disabilities. Rehabilitation therapists are crucial to provide high quality rehabilitation therapy; however, there is a significant shortage of these professionals in China. One of the effective strategies to address this challenge is using the norm of the workforce for rehabilitation therapy, which is an index for assessing the personnel required in a facility. This research aimed to create a rehabilitation therapist-required norm under institutional perspective in Shandong Province, China, based on the Workload Indicators of Staffing Needs (WISN) method, which was created by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1998 to analyse staff utilization at various levels of the health care system. Methods: We conducted descriptive and quantitative research from October to November 2020 in the rehabilitation department of a tertiary hospital in Weifang City, China. Focus groups, online interviews, and document reviews were conducted to gather data and calculations of the WISN method performed. Results: Admission assessment, pre-treatment evaluation, rehabilitation therapy, post-treatment evaluation, and health education for patients were identified as the main priority group activities. Interviews and analysis of documents summarized five factors related to rehabilitation therapists' health service activities. In this study, the annual working time of each therapist was 1,776 h per year. The WISN method calculations showed that the norm of rehabilitation therapists in this tertiary hospital was 23 therapists. As the department had 13 therapists, there was a shortage of 10 therapists based on the WISN calculation, with a ratio of 0.57, which represented the actual compared to the ideal number of therapists. Conclusion: Workload pressure was high for therapists in this tertiary hospital. This model revealed a demand for ten more therapists in the rehabilitation department. The WISN method can help hospital administrators in therapist workforce monitoring, including in regard to therapists. Therefore, the WISN method should be embraced as part of hospital human resource planning and recruitment strategies to meet increasing rehabilitation needs.

Sex Differences in Categorical Adaptation for Faces and Chinese Characters during Early Perceptual Processing.

Previous event-related potential studies support sex differences in the N170 response during face and word processing; however, it remains unclear whether N170 categorical adaptation for faces and words is different between women and men. Using an adaptation paradigm, in which an adaptor and subsequent test stimulus are presented during each trial, the present study investigated N170 categorical adaptation for faces and Chinese characters in both women and men. The results demonstrated that the N170 amplitude elicited by test stimuli in within-category condition was lower than in control category condition, and this was observed during both face and Chinese character processing in women and men. In addition, we found that men have greater N170 categorical adaptation for face and word processing than women. There was also a significant correlation between N170 categorical adaptation indices for face and Chinese character processing in men, which did not occur in women. These findings suggest that men and women process repeated faces or words differently.

Sex differences of hemispheric lateralization for faces and Chinese characters in early perceptual processing.

Previous event-related potential studies showed that the N170 response is left-lateralized for words and right-lateralized for faces. Using a one-back repetition task, this study aimed to clarify sex differences in hemispheric specialization for both faces and words in early visual processing. We found that the N170 amplitude elicited by faces in males was right-lateralized, while in females it was bilateral. Interestingly, the N170 amplitude elicited by Chinese characters in males was bilateral, whereas in females it was left-lateralized. The N170 latency for faces was shorter in females than in males, whereas the N170 latency for Chinese characters was similar in females and males. The degree of lateralization of faces was significantly related to the degree of lateralization of Chinese characters in both the female and male groups. Therefore, sex differences in N170 hemispheric lateralization for faces are different from those for Chinese characters, and there are some links between the two categories of objects of expertise in early perceptual processing.