Congratulations to all of you and ASORC on your 25th Anniversary. It is great to be able to be here with you at this historic time. I want to express my appreciation to organizers of this conference, ASORC and each of you here. I want to thank Trevor Hawkins for inviting me, and also to acknowledge Bert Biggs who gave me the opportunity to be involved with the Journal during the past few years.

I also want to thank you for the honor of being able to share a few thoughts with you about rehabilitation counseling. It is particularly pleasing to me to be here, in that this presentation is on the eve, as some of you may know, of my leaving Australia, having been here for three years. It has been a wonderful time both personally and professionally — an opportunity not many have to practice their profession in a different country and culture — albeit not one that was totally foreign in that you all use English.

I want to share a few thoughts today related to the rehabilitation and rehabilitation counseling profession and think a bit about what I see as happening as we stand on the brink of a new millennium. It is not new thinking nor particularly original, borrowing as I have from many sources, though I must take full responsibility for what I say. Also, I should emphasize that it is not offered as advice but rather a reinforcement of what many of you already know. As an educator and university professor, I do get stuck in one mode sometimes overemphasizing what I consider important. My remarks are based on my obviously American background but hopefully tempered with some of my experiences and observations here in Australia.

Measurement in Rehabilitation Medicine commences with clear definitions of the terms used and clear ideas about the nature of the entity being measured. In this lecture, issues such as goal based measurement, the difficulties of comparison, weighting systems, different types of scales, and the mathematical problems they present are discussed. Scales discussed include the American Medical Association Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, and the Functional Independence Measure (FIM). Caution is necessary when drawing conclusions from statistics generated from ordinal scales, especially when comparisons are being made. The Australasian Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine supports the use of standard measures and has developed an Australian Standard Data Set for Rehabilitation Medicine. The functional measure used in this data set is the FIM.

Demonstrating the effectiveness of health care interventions requires valid measurement of the impact, or outcome of those interventions. It is increasingly suggested that Quality of Life (QoL) is the ‘gold standard’ outcome internationally (Bowling 1995) and in Australasia (Mordue & Parkin, 1997). Although a number of QoL measures are now available, questions remain about the definition of the concept itself and the psychometric properties of those measures. A consequence of major concern is that health services research or clinical studies of healthcare interventions using inadequately defined outcomes or invalid measures will in turn produce results that lack validity. This paper explores a number of such issues concerning the concept of QoL and the way it is measured.

This grounded theory study explains how health professionals work in interdisciplinary teams in health services where the call for new collaborations is intensifying. Forty-four participants from four teams in two major acute-care hospitals participated in the study. In total there were eighty hours of interviewing and eighty hours of participant observation. All data were constantly compared and analysed using Glaser's emergent approach to grounded theory. Underpinning the study are the premises of symbolic interactionism that are assumed to shape the focus of this study, team interactions, and collective action within an acute care setting. The study participants' patterns of behaviour would suggest that, when interdisciplinary practice is well established, an attitude of cooperative inquiry pervades joint actions and interactions that focus on meeting service needs.

People born in non-English Speaking Countries (NESCs) and resident in Australia make up 14.2% of the Australian population and a sizeable proportion of the current immigration program — the humanitarian and non-humanitarian components. This article presents some background about the numbers of overseas born people resident in Australia especially those from NESCs, a brief history of the Australian immigration program, and the present policy of multiculturalism in the context of settlement. Some of these overseas born people have already, or are likely to, participate in rehabilitation counselling, and it is argued that rehabilitation counselling processes will be enhanced with a knowledge of such clients' culture as well as the practical application of general cross-cultural casework skills.

In the developing field of Life Coaching, Rehabilitation Counsellors can find an approach that when applied in the Rehabilitation setting can get real results. The profession of life coaching is discussed with regard to its origins and applications, and then compared to the field of psychology and rehabilitation counselling. The ‘Coach Approach’ is offered as an exciting new paradigm that creates an effective partnership in assisting clients to reach their full potential.

Rehabilitation Counsellors utilise comprehensive skills that have strong parallels with the Human Resources environment. As facilitators of development, improvement and goal achievement, Rehabilitation Counsellors are best equipped to deal with the ever changing face of people and organisations. There are key competencies in both fields that allow for the link between the two to be established, therefore creating an alternative career option for Rehabilitation Counsellors. The Human Resources field provides opportunities for Rehabilitation Counsellors to access large organisations with potential for higher remuneration and career development. Furthermore, the Human Resources field allows rehabilitation counsellors the platform to showcase their range of skills in order to achieve an organisations goals and objectives.

There have been various factors and events that have contributed to the development of the rehabilitation field in Australia. This paper particularly examines the social, economical and political influences, which have made significant impact on the field. Having established the historical basis of rehabilitation, this paper examines the current changes that are happening in the field and make some suggestions for future developments in both the field and in the profession of rehabilitation counselling.

The paper presents data on the use of physician services by 354 older adults in New Zealand. Utilization of physician services and predisposing factors were ascertained by structured interview in a cross-sectional sample of men (n = 155) and women (n = 199) aged 60 years or over. Interview responses were used to test the hypothesis that a combination of predisposing, enabling, and need characteristics are better predictors of physician service use, than need characteristics alone. Hierarchical regression results predicting the use of medical services support our hypothesis, underscoring the importance of need and enabling characteristics for service use. Research applying the behavioral model to the use of services among older adults could be enriched by the inclusion of enabling and predisposing characteristics.