Dr. Jonas Sokolof: Oncological Rehabilitation Medicine, Part 2

RUSK Insights on Rehabilitation Medicine

Dr. Jonas Sokolof is Director of the Division of Oncological Rehabilitation and Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. He is certified by the American Board of PM&R both in Sports Medicine and in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation. His doctor of osteopathy degree is from the New York Institute Of Technology. His Residency occurred at the Harvard Medical School and the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston. He also had a fellowship in sports medicine from Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. Prior to arriving at NYU Langone Health in 2018, he was at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

In Part 1, we discussed the following: if the recent COVID resurgence affected his ability to furnish care for patients with cancer; the types of cancer in which most of his patients can be found; what manual medicine entails; assessment of patients' emotional needs; supportive needs of patients of an informational, spiritual, or social nature; whether patients are requested to produce autobiographical accounts of how they experience life as a cancer patient and the treatment they receive; and efforts to enable patients to become adept as self-managers of cancer so that they can be effective in self-monitoring, recognizing and reporting symptoms, and treating side effects. In Part 2, we discussed the following: from the perspective of osteopathic medicine, how rehabilitation can be used to deal with undesirable side effects; extent to which telemedicine is employed in the treatment of patients; current status of an exercise oncology initiative known as “Moving Through Cancer;” challenges involved in motivating patients to exercise whose lifestyle prior to the onset of cancer did not include efforts to be physically fit; and topics involving cancer rehabilitation where more research could prove to be advantageous in improving patient care, along with research that either is underway or projected to occur.