The Department of Rehabilitation Sciences of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University began to provide professional training to occupational therapists and physiotherapists in 1978. After over 40 years of development, we have now 45 faculty members from the rank of assistant professor to chair professor in the areas of physiotherapy, occupational therapy, and related basic sciences such as psychology, neuroscience, public health, etc. More glaringly, all of them have a PhD degree from prestigious local and overseas universities. In addition, we have 22 clinical associates/senior clinical associates providing more hands on teaching to our students as well as a team of more than 45 supporting administrative and technical staff.

To help advance the knowledge of our graduates and those trained overseas or on the Chinese mainland, we offer five taught master’s degree programmes on a self-financed basis. Last but not least, we also provide research degree programmes at MPhil and PhD levels. We have had altogether over 130 full-time MPhil students and PhD students in RS history. The students are from different parts of the world including South East Asia, Europe, North America, and Africa,  reflecting the success of our efforts in internationalisation. The research programmes aim at preparing the students to contribute to the discovery and application of knowledge pertaining to these two professions.

Our department emphasises the importance of knowledge creation in support of teaching and clinical practice of our two professions through active engagements in research activities. Thanks to the hard work of our faculty members, the department is at the forefront of developing new knowledge in rehabilitation sciences especially in the following five areas: 

1) complementary and integrative health (CIH) in the East-West context; 

2) translational neuroscience and rehabilitation: sensori-motor systems (TNR: SM); 

3) translational neuroscience and rehabilitation: cognitive-affective systems (TNR: CAS); 

4) musculoskeletal and sport rehabilitation; and 

5) healthy ageing

We particularly focus on promoting translational research that intends to bring discoveries in basic sciences to clinical practice. All of these research activities are supported by the cutting-edge facilities in our laboratories at both the university and departmental levels.