Would discussion on patients' needs add value to the rehabilitation process?

The objective of this study was to examine the effect of therapists' methods of addressing patients' problems (based on assessment results and discussions of patients' needs compared with assessment results only) on the level of agreement, between patients and therapists, over patients' daily living problems. A comparative design was adopted to examine the five most important daily living problems identified by patients and their occupational therapists. Twelve occupational therapists and five stroke patients of each therapist under in-patient rehabilitation were recruited. Thus, a total of 60 patients were recruited. Content analyses of the therapists' methods of analysing their patients' problems revealed that eight therapists had discussed their patients' needs with their patients (66.7%) and four relied on the assessment results (33.3%). The kappa statistics showed that a higher agreement of daily living problems was identified for the patients of those therapists who had held discussions (kappa=0.76; P<0.001). The results suggested that therapists should take their patients' needs into account in the planning of interventions. If therapists could help their patients to carry out their future life roles, it would lead the patients to better participate in the rehabilitation process.