Are the two terms below interchangeable when addressing injuries?
- Rehabilitation is care that can help you get back, keep, or improve abilities that you need for daily life. These abilities may be physical, mental, and/or cognitive (thinking and learning). You may have lost them because of a disease or injury, or as a side effect from a medical treatment. Rehabilitation can improve your daily life and functioning.
- Physical therapy is a non-invasive discipline that helps individuals develop, maintain and restore maximum body movement and physical function. Physical therapy can help clients recover from an injury, relieve pain, prevent future injury or deal with a chronic condition. It can be applied at any age or stage of life. The ultimate goal of physical therapy is to improve health and quality of life.
May I use rehabilitation and physical therapy interchangeably, as synonyms? Repeating "physical therapy" multiple times in a sentence decreases readability. The context is physical rehabilitation after a traumatic injury. Patients rehabilitative care is described by their physical therapy use (this includes relatively similar terms like occupational therapy and exercise therapy).