A goal for rehabilitation after stroke is to regain the ability to manage activities of daily living (ADL). The Swedish health care legislation recognizes that individuals bring unique sets of needs and preferences to encounters with the health care system, which should impact the services delivered. Consequently rehabilitation needs to be designed to meet each individual’s concern i.e., be client-centered. This implies interventions tailored to the client’s ability and perceived needs, services that take the client’s unique life-world experiences as the point of departure for goals and collaboration during the rehabilitation. However, studies on such services are scarce. Thus the aim was to compare a client-centered ADL intervention (CADL) to usual ADL training (UADL) regarding perceived participation, independence in ADL and life satisfaction at 3 months after inclusion.
Methods:
Sixteen rehabilitation units in Stockholm, Uppsala and Gävleborg, Sweden were randomly assigned to deliver either CADL or UADL to people in need of ADL rehabilitation after stroke. The occupational therapists (OT) who delivered the CADL were specifically trained. At 3 months perceived participation was assessed with the Stroke impact scale (SIS) and the Occupational Gaps questionnaire (OGQ), self-reported dependence in ADL with the Barthel Index (BI) and the Katz Extended ADL Index (KE), and life satisfaction with the LiSat-11. Number of contacts with an OT was collected in the clients’ medical records. Intention-to-treat analysis was applied. The significance level was set to 0.05. ClinicalTrials.gov identifier:
NCT01417585
.
Results:
Two hundred and eighty persons with stroke were included (CADL n=126, UADL n=154). The mean number of OT sessions in the CADL was 19 and 14 in the UADL group. There were no differences regarding SIS (p=0.64), OGQ (p=0.15), BI (p=0.06), KE (p=0.78) or in LiSat-11 (p=0.77).
Conclusion:
Albeit people with stroke who receive CADL tend to be more independent in ADL at 3 months it is likely that differences in perceived participation and life satisfaction will not be present until later. Thus there is a need to evaluate such services in the long term, their impact on significant others and qualitative studies of the clients’ experiences.
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