Through the clinician's lens: objective and subjective views of disability

In this study, we used recovery preference exploration (RPE) to explore how clinicians practicing in an inpatient medical rehabilitation facility assign meaning to alternative paths of recovery from profound disability. Through the RPE procedure, 33 clinicians ranked preference for recovery from 18 imagined activity limitations and provided narrative explanations for their choices. We used mixed methods, including grounded theory, to identify themes that expressed their recovery choices. Sixteen themes emerged that were classified into separate but linked procedural and conditional reasoning taxonomies. These theme taxonomies represented logical scientific inquiries vs. more phenomenological inquiries into lifeworld meanings, respectively. Just over two thirds (66.8%) of all quotes specified themes from the conditional reasoning taxonomy. The RPE procedure appeared to simulate a lived experience of imagined disability for the clinicians through which contexts and meanings began to emerge independent of the clinicians' scientific attitudes.