Bridging Research and Practice: A Preliminary Detailed Analysis of Current Upper Limb Occupational Therapy Dose and Content in Publicly Funded Poststroke Rehabilitation.

OBJECTIVE

To characterize the dose and content of poststroke upper limb usual care during inpatient occupational therapy (OT) sessions.

DESIGN

Two-week longitudinal observational study.

SETTING

Publicly funded inpatient rehabilitation center.

PARTICIPANTS

Eight poststroke inpatients (N=8) receiving OT. No intervention groups were assigned; all participants underwent observation of usual care sessions.

INTERVENTIONS: No experimental intervention was applied. The OT sessions were filmed and analyzed.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Session dose (frequency, time in OT, time allocated to upper-limb rehabilitation, repetition intensity) and content (rehabilitation activity types, upper-limb movement types), analyzed using a video-synchronized observational data collection system.

RESULTS

From 8 participants, a total of 42 sessions were videotaped, translating into 2250 minutes of OT session dose and content. On average, 28.6±16.1 minutes (53.3% of total session time) was dedicated specifically to upper-limb movements. During this time, participants performed a mean of 209.9±175.7 upper-limb movement repetitions per session, most of which involved reaching movements (mean=111.5±97.7). Additionally, most of the time spent on upper-limb movements (mean=15.8±13.1 minutes) focused on active activities.

CONCLUSIONS

This study offered valuable insights into the current dose and content of inpatient OT sessions for upper-limb rehabilitation in a publicly funded rehabilitation center. These findings can inform strategies to optimize stroke rehabilitation outcomes, with future research focusing on adapting them to real-world clinical settings.