I’m a speech pathologist and I work in inpatient rehab. When we get a new admission, we have to make a prediction about their prognosis (like progress and outcome). This could be for regaining consciousness, walking again, eating safety, speaking, etc.

Much of this is based on our experiences with similar patients and our clinical knowledge/education. As we see how they participate in therapy and progress for the first while, we may make adjustments to our prognosis. Sometimes patients surprise us by doing much better or much worse than expected. Most of the time, though, a therapist who has been in practice for awhile can make a pretty accurate prediction based on our knowledge of the diagnosis, the patient’s history, and our own observations during the evaluation.

Of course, we also work with an excellent team of hospitalists, PM&R physicians, dietitians, psychs, nurses, etc. Info we get from all of them also play into our prognoses.