Medical Alert Booklet
Developed and approved by rehabilitation experts from the Orlando Health Advanced Rehabilitation Institute, the purpose of the Medical Alert Booklet is for patients to have a booklet to carry with them that will clearly indicate their condition and provide recommendations on ways to help and best communicate with them.
Each personalized booklet is filled out by the patient’s therapy team explaining that they have a chronic neurological impairment and identifying areas they may find challenging. This may include communication, physical and thinking/cognition challenges due to medical conditions related to stroke, traumatic brain injury (TBI), brain tumor, or progressive neurological impairments such as Parkinson’s disease, muscular sclerosis (MS) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS / Lou Gehrig's disease).
The booklet can alert first responders in an emergency situation, allowing them to quickly understand the person’s condition and how to best care for them. The booklet also can be used on a daily basis by individuals as needed in various community settings.
The Medical Alert Booklet was designed to address the gap that currently exists with understanding disorders that we typically do not see. In addition to the creation of the booklet, we have created an education resource and used it during virtual training sessions with our local first responders and care teams to even further reduce this gap. Our overall goal is to assist care teams in better understanding these disorders and to allow survivors to feel more at ease as they feel that they are being seen and heard.