New exhibition on the development of rehabilitation education at Rīga Stradiņš University

An exhibition on the development of rehabilitation studies at Rīga Stradiņš University (RSU) is on display in the RSU History Museum's display cases outside the Great Hall (16 Dzirciema iela) until 20 December. 

The exhibition presents the development of rehabilitation study programmes at RSU in chronological order. The main element of the exhibition is a timeline of facts in the field of rehabilitation from 1950 to the present.

Publicity photo of the exhibition's display cases

Rīga Stradiņš University (RSU) has been the most important educational centre for the training of rehabilitation professionals in Latvia since its inception. Between 1950 and 1990, when RSU was called the Riga Medical Institute (RMI), physical therapy¹, balneology, therapeutic physical culture and therapeutic nutrition were taught to students of the Faculty of Medicine within RMI Departments of Faculty Therapy and Hospital Therapy (today both are included in the Department of Internal Diseases).

A new development in the education of rehabilitation professionals

In the early 1990s, RSU, which was the Medical Academy of Latvia from 1990 to 2002, started developing educational programs to train the first professionals in rehabilitation within higher education. With the support of Danish and Swedish professional associations, the first modified study programmes for training functional specialists - physiotherapists² and occupational therapists – were established (1995–1996). Other programs were gradually added to them such as Audio Speech Therapy, Orthotics and Prosthetics, and later also study programs in Nutrition Science, Social Work, Art Therapy, Health Psychology, and Supervision in Professional Practice. (1996–2013).  

It all continues at the newly created Faculty of Health and Sports Sciences

Professional study programmes at RSU that train functional specialists, including the academic master's Rehabilitation study programme, have been part of the new Faculty of Health and Sports Sciences since February 2024. This faculty offers the widest choice of study programmes at RSU. These changes allow to broaden interdisciplinary cooperation skills of students not only in the study process, but also in research.

¹Physical therapy is a branch of medical science and practice that uses physical factors from the external environment for therapeutic purposes, including natural (light, water, mud, climate, etc.) and artificially created (transformed electrical and mechanical energy in various forms that can be used in therapeutic practice).

²Physiotherapy - a branch of medicine (including physiotherapeutic procedures) that studies the healing properties of natural and artificial physical factors and develops methods for their use in medical treatment (thesaurus.lv).