Rehabilitation

In driver rehabilitation we see people whose lives have changed forever be it from a serious car crash, acute medical event, or medical condition.  We partner with leading national health care providers in Canada and New Zealand to deliver quality driver rehabilitation to our clients.  This work involves liaising with specialist health care workers such as physicians, neuropsychologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, and a wider patient care team, to address the transportation needs and driving solutions for individuals.

After a background in representative sports including ice hockey, lacrosse and basketball, and the injuries that accompany them, Janet has become a trained specialist on the impacts of brain injury and driving.  This includes not only the effects of cognition on driving, but also anxiety and the need for adaptive equipment after traumatic car crashes.

Some takeaways from our course for anxious drivers: 

It is common for people who have passenger and/or driver anxiety to speed when they return to driving.  It seems counterintuitive, but it can be the brain’s coping mechanism and a stress response to being anxious.  Anxiety causes us to want the trip to be over with, so we want to get there as quickly as possible.

Our program looks at the psychological reasons why we can struggle due to a motor vehicle accident:

1. Post Traumatic Stress
2. The Triune brain:
   • 1. Thinking part of brain (frontal lobe)
   • 2.  Emotional part/control centre (limbic centre)
   • 3.  Brain stem (thalamus & medulla regulate automatic movements such as respiration, temperature)
3. Fight or flight: automatic responses to “deal with threats”; an essential survival mechanism:  extremely powerful and overriding
   • Powerful programmed responses when activated under response to threat includes breathing being affected, heart pumps faster, adrenalin released-ready for action, stress hormone released (cortisol)-depresses our immune system, digestion system affected
4. We must learn to override the part of the brain that has learned to shut down because of traumatic experiences; this can be facilitated with the help of specialized theory and in-car instruction techniques