CEUs: 1 | Format: Self-paced | Audience: Rehabilitation and healthcare professionals, including physical therapists, physical therapist assistants, occupational therapists, occupational therapy assistants, speech-language pathologists, athletic trainers, rehabilitation nurses, physicians, social workers, case managers, care coordinators, clinical leaders, and other professionals involved in rehabilitation care.
Approvals: This continuing education has been approved by the Maryland State Board of Physical Therapy Examiners for 1 Continuing Education Hours [2026-472].
Course Overview:
Patient access, treatment options, and recovery are shaped by more than clinical need alone. Policies, institutional practices, insurance requirements, transportation, geography, language access, technology, and resource distribution can influence whether patients receive timely and appropriate care.
Structural Racism in Rehabilitation Practice is the second course in the Rehabilitation Equity Series™. This focused, 60-minute course examines how historical, cultural, and institutional systems can interact to produce recurring racial inequities in healthcare. Through rehabilitation-focused examples, learners explore how seemingly neutral policies and routine processes may create different pathways to care across racial and ethnic groups.
Participants will follow the care continuum from inpatient treatment through discharge, home, outpatient services, and community participation. The course emphasizes recognizing patterns in referral, scheduling, communication, equipment access, treatment availability, and follow-up—without treating race or ethnicity as a measure of clinical risk or recovery potential.
The course concludes with the 3Rs of Equitable Rehabilitation™—Recognize, Reflect, and Respond—as a practical framework for moving from awareness to action. Learners will practice identifying a system-level concern, examining who carries the burden and what information may be missing, and selecting responses that support the patient while addressing the process that may recreate the inequity.
Course Topics:
- Defining structural racism in healthcare
- Understanding mutually reinforcing societal systems
- Examining how policies and institutional practices shape access
- Recognizing structural racism across the care continuum
- Identifying recurring racial and ethnic patterns in care processes
- Distinguishing race and ethnicity from rehabilitation potential
- Applying the 3Rs of Equitable Rehabilitation™
- Advancing system-level change and accountability
Course Completion:
The course includes narrated instruction, interactive activities, realistic scenarios, knowledge checks, and a downloadable learner resource. Participants must earn a score of at least 80% on the final assessment to complete the course. Unlimited retakes are permitted.