Westmead Hospital

Brain Injury Unit

The Westmead Brain Injury Rehabilitation Service (BIRS) is located at Westmead Hospital and provides comprehensive specialised rehabilitation services to people with traumatic brain injury. It provides a regional, supra-regional and state-wide service primarily to people of Western Sydney Local Health District (WSLHD), Nepean and Blue Mountains Local Health District and to the Central West, Far West and North Western regions of NSW.

It consists of an inpatient program, transitional living program, community rehabilitation team, outreach team and research team. These arms of the service allow patients to receive rehabilitation from coma through to community reintegration. It is the only service within WSLHD providing rehabilitation services to people with brain injury.

The inpatient program of the Westmead BIRS is an acute rehabilitation program, providing an interdisciplinary rehabilitation service to patients with TBI from the very early stages of recovery through to hospital discharge. During this stage of rehabilitation, patients function at a very low level of independence, have extremely impaired cognition and often demonstrate highly challenging behaviours characterised by aggression, sexual disinhibition and impulsivity. Due to the program’s ability to manage these patients with complex disability, the inpatient program serves as a tertiary referral centre for widespread regions of NSW.

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