Abstract
Purpose
Goal setting is an essential rehabilitation activity. However, multidisciplinary rehabilitation staff goal-setting practice with stroke survivors with aphasia and associated training needs are not well understood.
Methods
We designed, piloted, and conducted a survey of stroke rehabilitation staff in the UK, Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, Canada, Ireland. Analysis included descriptive statistics, chi-square and Fisher’s exact tests, and qualitative content analysis.
Results
We received 251 responses from 118 SLTs and 133 non-SLTs. Most reported setting goals with most or all people with aphasia (78%, 197/251); 57% (138/244) rarely or never provided an accessible copy of goals. All disciplines reported significantly less confidence setting goals with people with aphasia than without aphasia (p = 0.012, n = 119). Barriers to goal setting included the communication impairment (especially severe aphasia) and poor insight. Staff described feeling ill-equipped to support people with aphasia in goal setting; only 27% (67/251) had accessed training to do so.
Conclusions
Rehabilitation staff described involving stroke survivors with aphasia in goal setting but lacked confidence doing so and receive inadequate training and support. Training should target multidisciplinary staff confidence and communication support strategies and resources so that people with aphasia and families are supported as goal-setting partners.
Goal setting is an essential rehabilitation activity. However, multidisciplinary rehabilitation staff goal-setting practice with stroke survivors with aphasia and associated training needs are not well understood.
Methods
We designed, piloted, and conducted a survey of stroke rehabilitation staff in the UK, Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, Canada, Ireland. Analysis included descriptive statistics, chi-square and Fisher’s exact tests, and qualitative content analysis.
Results
We received 251 responses from 118 SLTs and 133 non-SLTs. Most reported setting goals with most or all people with aphasia (78%, 197/251); 57% (138/244) rarely or never provided an accessible copy of goals. All disciplines reported significantly less confidence setting goals with people with aphasia than without aphasia (p = 0.012, n = 119). Barriers to goal setting included the communication impairment (especially severe aphasia) and poor insight. Staff described feeling ill-equipped to support people with aphasia in goal setting; only 27% (67/251) had accessed training to do so.
Conclusions
Rehabilitation staff described involving stroke survivors with aphasia in goal setting but lacked confidence doing so and receive inadequate training and support. Training should target multidisciplinary staff confidence and communication support strategies and resources so that people with aphasia and families are supported as goal-setting partners.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 479-503 |
| Number of pages | 25 |
| Journal | Aphasiology |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| Early online date | 7 Feb 2022 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 4 Mar 2023 |
Keywords
- aphasia
- stroke
- rehabilitation
- goal setting
- accessibility
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Clinical Neurology
- Neurology
- Developmental and Educational Psychology
- General Health Professions
- Language and Linguistics
- LPN and LVN
- Otorhinolaryngology
- Linguistics and Language
Documents and Links
- Brown, S.E. et al (2022) A multinational online survey of the goal setting practice of rehabilitation staff with stroke survivors with aphasia
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.