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The purpose of this paper is to provide a professional consensus position with regard to the provision of specialist inpatient rehabilitation services for people with intellectual disability (ID), autism and mental health, behavioural or forensic needs in the UK.

The concept of rehabilitation is discussed, as well as the functions and goals of specialist inpatient rehabilitation services with regard to the aforementioned contexts. Current use of rehabilitation beds is considered, both on a regional and national scale, as well as various outcome measures, including effectiveness, patient safety and patient experience.

There is a clear need for specialist inpatient rehabilitation services, though historically there have been instances of inappropriate admissions, as well as lengthy inpatient stays that could have been significantly reduced with the right type of community support package. Such services should be subjected to rigorous measurement of outcome measures, to determine that patients within such services are receiving a consistently high standard of care. Additionally, amendments to current legal frameworks should be considered, with a view to accommodating for individuals with capacity who require continuous community-based supervision.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first article detailing a professional consensus position for specialist inpatient rehabilitation services for people with ID, autism and mental health, behavioural or forensic needs.

Telecare promises to deliver healthcare services more efficiently while, at the same time, improving the quality of care. The purpose of this paper is to challenge these promises by analysing the implications of introducing telecare in the rehabilitation of patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Empirically, the paper is based on interviews with and observations of rehabilitation therapists and patients taking part in a Danish telerehabilitation programme. Theoretically, the paper draws on Science and Technology Studies.

The introduction of telecare alters rehabilitation practices in multiple ways. First, several new time-consuming work routines, carried out in collaboration between therapists, patients and technical professions, emerge. Although crucial in establishing and maintaining telerehabilitation infrastructures, this work remains invisible in evaluations of the programme. Second, rather than simply increasing patient agency, responsibilities are redistributed and negotiated in subtle and non-uniform ways. These negotiations make it less transparent where one responsibility begins and where another potentially conflicting one ends.

Evaluations of telecare technologies should pay more attention to work- and responsibility-related effects of introducing telecare in order better to account for predicted and unpredicted as well as desirable and undesirable socio-technical changes.

Using an ethnographic approach, the paper points to the discrepancy between simplistic political promises that telecare technologies can serve as tools for improvement, on the one hand, and the substantial changes in the organisation and management of healthcare observed in practice, on the other. Rather than regarding telecare as technologies of improvement, it is more productive to regard them as technologies of change.

This article aims to cover the experience of working with the new framework/criteria for specialist neuro‐rehabilitation services to meet the needs of patients with rare or complex conditions to achieve eligibility for a level 1 status.

Royal Leamington Spa Rehabilitation Hospital is currently collecting the full UK Rehabilitation Outcomes Collaborative (UKROC) dataset for all in‐patient episodes. A number of tools for measuring rehabilitation needs were gathered by the multi‐disciplinary team (i.e. costing of the service including staffing, building, equipments, etc.), and a range of clinical measures including needs: (the rehabilitation complexity scale); inputs: the Northwick Park nursing and therapy dependency scales (NPDS, NPTDA); and outcomes: the UK functional assessment measure (UK FIM+FAM) which are collated on the national UKROC database.

These measures have been used to assess the level of a patient's complex needs and to help formulate bandings, which are being used to inform national tariffs. A number of advantages and disadvantages have been acknowledged from the introduction of the new criteria and have been addressed in this viewpoint. As the current trend for services is to be paid (payment by results) depending on activity and outcome, it is essential to provide good outcome data to monitor performance and justify the units' effectiveness.

This paper outlines the authors' journey to achieve specialist commissioning and highlights the importance of monitoring and measuring the units' performance to reflect the continuous needs of the NHS and patients.

The application of forecasting to health care is not new. A frequent issue in many Inpatient Rehabilitation Facilities (IRFs) is the fluctuating and unpredictable census. With scarce resources, particularly physical therapists and occupational therapists, this unpredictability makes appropriate scheduling of these resources challenging. This research addresses the issue of patient admissions in an inpatient rehabilitation facility attached to an 861 bed level-one trauma hospital. The goal is to develop a predictive model for the IRF's Census to assist in resource planning (e.g., labor, beds, and materials).

This paper considers intermediate care as part of a whole‐systems approach to care. It argues that this perspective allows a wider appreciation of the potential benefits of intermediate care, and that this would also be a welcome feature in future research studies. The paper draws on an evaluation of intermediate care in Cornwall and outlines the central role of intermediate care co‐ordination in the whole system. The example of residential rehabilitation is then used to examine how an individual service relates to the system as a whole. Finally, factors that may also influence local systems such as partnership working and rurality are considered; these are seen as important considerations for any other authorities which might seek to replicate the Cornwall approach to intermediate care.

This paper aims to report verbatim the voices of older people describing their experiences of rehabilitation services in community hospitals and local authority short‐term residential units followed by “usual care” services at home. It aims to contribute directly to the implementation of the DH Section 256 “reablement guidance”.

The paper is a qualitative study, based on semi‐structured face‐to‐face interviews in 2002/3, with 42 participants (mean age 81.4 years) using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA).

Four main themes emerged from users' comments: the complexity of rehabilitative need, the influence of the setting, the role of the staff and the availability of reablement support back at home.

Qualitative studies have limited generalisability, but these findings are consistent both with other studies of user experience and with earlier related evidence about assessment, institutionalisation and psychological factors.

The findings clearly demonstrate changing rehabilitative needs along the care pathway, with implications for commissioners and providers of reablement services. The findings bring a user perspective to current debates about the integration of services and the use of pooled budgets.

Effective reablement is critically dependent on service users' co‐operation and motivation. It therefore needs to be highly responsive to their needs and views. This study offers specific user views about their experiences in different settings and at different stages of reablement, together with their ideas for how it might work better. The data are analysed within a single framework, offering an example of the type of local evaluation currently sought by the Department of Health.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the psychometric characteristics of the Questionnaire of Family members’ Satisfaction about the Rehabilitation (QFSR), a new questionnaire assessing the satisfaction of patients’ families with the in-hospital rehabilitation service, i.e., the organizational procedure, medical treatment, relationship with nurses/other health workers, and outcome.

The QFSR (13 items) was administered to 1,226 (F=60.4 percent; mean age=57.4, SD 15 years) family members of patients admitted to two units for inpatient rehabilitation, i.e., cardiovascular and neuromotor.

Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) confirmed the theoretical four-factor structure of the questionnaire in a subsample of 308 respondents randomly selected from the sample (SB χ² (61)=57.4, p=0.61; RMSEA=0.0; 90 percent CI [0.0, 0.031], CFI=1.00). The remaining 708 respondents (393 relatives of cardiovascular unit inpatients and 315 relatives of neuromotor unit inpatients) were used to test measurement invariance between the groups of family members with patients in the two units. The configurial, scalar, and strict factorial invariance provided a good fit to the data.

The QFSR, specifically developed to measure the satisfaction of family members of patients undergoing rehabilitation, appears to be a promising brief questionnaire that can provide important indications for continuous improvement in the delivery of healthcare.

This paper's purpose is to give an overview of current research regarding the concept of “health tourism” with a focus on Switzerland, and to determine whether a consensus on this concept and its embedding in existing/future markets can be found.

The paper is an explorative study combining literature review, questionnaires and qualitative interviews. Grounded theory was employed.

A service from the field of health care must have been provided prior to health tourism, allowing it to be classified under the health care system. Thus, health tourism is classified under the market for the sick and not under tourism which targets the healthy. Furthermore a new market for the healthy is emerging, which needs to be defined. As an example health(i)ness could help to clarify the terminology, to be seen as a gatekeeper of health and as a cultural paradigm change from cure to prevention.

Further research is needed, regarding the positioning and development of health tourism and its synergies, as the cost pressures in health care increase and will continue to have a sustainable impact on health tourism.

The paper provides better knowledge of the term health tourism, its general classification, and particular reference to Switzerland, and information about upcoming changes in health care.

The findings add to the knowledge of how health tourism is embedded into health care and tourism, and show potential within the market for the healthy. It provides information to members of the tourism and health care market.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the transition to community life, in relation to vocational goals and aspirations, for 18 people with traumatic brain injury following the discharge from a neurological rehabilitation hospital.

The study was a longitudinal qualitative study, framed within interpretivism. A phenomenological approach was employed. Participants, their significant other, and members of the rehabilitation team involved in their care were interviewed at the time of discharge from the ward, after six months and one year following discharge from the ward.

Themes which emerged from the data gave insights into the meaning and value of vocational occupations, impact of rehabilitation, insight and awareness, environmental influences, alteration to the life‐course and moving forward to a new life. Throughout, issues of identity and reconstruction were identified.

Use of alternative paradigms to the traditional medical viewpoint can raise awareness of issues of identity and biographical reconstruction which are less widely reported in rehabilitation literature.

Goals could be re‐framed and include moving forward to a life with meaning and purpose. For many, this could involve work and vocational occupations but for others it may not. The need to address concerns which are priorities of those in receipt of care is highlighted in order to support interventions and the reconstruction of identity and a life with value.