The thesis has two main research goals. Firstly:- a descriptive study explored functional status in patients after brain injury following discharge from in-patient rehabilitation to their own homes in the community. Secondly:- an intervention study was carried out to explore the role of home based visits as part of post discharge follow-up of patients after inpatient rehabilitation to address the findings of the first study. In the first study, 89 patients admitted consecutively for early inpatient rehabilitation following a traumatic of haemorrhagic brain injury were visited at home by the researcher at six weeks after discharge and again at 15 months. Assessment using a number of measures of function characterised the disabilities that patients experienced and revealed that deterioration in everyday functioning was common after discharge home. These two factors led to the intervention study where 43 patients were recruited to evaluate whether visits to the patient's home in the early weeks after discharge would prevent deterioration and satisfy the carers' requests for information and support. Randomisation using the minimisation method led to an experimental group with 21 subjects and a control group with 22. Patients in the experimental group were visited weekly until the sixth week when both groups were assessed using a wide range of functional measures. Both groups were also assessed at 15 months after injury. The experimental group deteriorated less than the control group in the early post-discharge period and patients, carers and other professionals valued the service provided. However, this functional improvement was not maintained at the 15 month follow-up in some cases and factors contributing to this are discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:657126 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | McPherson, Kathryn Margaret |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/22481 |
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