O&P in the Rehabilitation Continuum of Care

O&P care is often viewed through the lens of a device that assists a person with limb loss or limb difference to function as independently as possible. The O&P profession, however, understands O&P care for what it really is: a patient-clinician relationship that, at its best, constitutes an ongoing set of clinical services where successful use of an orthosis or prosthesis can be viewed as the byproduct of a long-term clinical relationship. But this clinical relationship does not stand alone in a vacuum. In fact, the more O&P is viewed as clinical care, the more the O&P profession is considered part of a broader continuum of rehabilitation service providers where orthotists and prosthetists are treated as part of the rehabilitation provider team, bringing specialty services to patients undergoing a physician-prescribed treatment plan.