Carolinas Medical Center Program

Program Identity & Fit

Carolinas Rehabilitation's PM&R program is a longstanding, nationally recognized academic-community hybrid, affiliated with Wake Forest School of Medicine and anchored by a Level I trauma center that draws tertiary rehabilitation referrals from the Carolinas, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Georgia. Training blends a dedicated freestanding inpatient rehabilitation facility with extensive outpatient and interventional exposure (over 240 EMG procedures per resident, ultrasound- and fluoroscopy-guided injections, spasticity and prosthetics/orthotics work), and faculty spanning academic and private practice give residents comparable footing for either career path. Research is formally structured through a dedicated Residency Research Education Program led by PhD scientists with active NIH-funded and clinical trial portfolios in stroke, TBI, and Parkinson's disease, alongside parallel curricular tracks in quality improvement, resiliency, and administration/practice management. The program explicitly frames its mission around producing broadly skilled physiatrists prepared for fellowship, private practice, or academic careers, valuing resident autonomy, leadership initiative, and engagement across the full breadth of inpatient/outpatient physiatric subspecialties.