Providing Insights into the Challenges of Implementing Activity-Based Therapy in Canada: A Comparative Analysis Using Focus Group Interviews with Key Interest Groups.
Anita Kaiser, Katherine Chan, James Sessford and 7 others
PMID 38174133WHAT IT FOUND
Clinicians, patients, and administrators in Canada identified six barriers to activity-based therapy for spinal cord injury: gaps in training, lack of standardization, unclear timing, difficulty achieving high dosage, funding constraints, and poor measurement tools.
Key findings
01Participants identified six themes as challenges to implementing activity-based therapy: gaps in knowledge and training, standardizing the therapy, determining optimal timing, achieving high dosage and intensity, funding, and measuring participation and performance.
02Hospital and community clinicians specifically highlighted a lack of quality education and training, and the difficulty of achieving high dosage and intensity, as key challenges.
03Researchers, advocates, funders, and policy experts emphasized the lack of standardized guidelines and the difficulty of performing economic analyses to measure the impact of these programs.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
Three participant groups (researchers, hospital therapists, and advocates/funders/policy experts) did not reach the minimum target of eight participants. The study was conducted via web conferencing during the early pandemic, which may have compromised data quality due to participants' unfamiliarity with virtual platforms. The findings are specific to the Canadian healthcare context and may not generalize to other countries. As a qualitative study, it reports perceptions and themes rather than measurable clinical outcomes or effects of interventions.
Declared interests
The authors report no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the identified challenges as evidence that activity-based therapy is ineffective or unsafe. This study reports the perceptions of stakeholders regarding barriers to implementation, not clinical trial results showing a lack of benefit.