Challenges of being a scholarly clinician as perceived by stroke rehabilitation professionals

Stroke rehabilitation clinicians are responsible for offering quality services through evidence-based practices. How is this role fulfilled on a daily basis?

(1) To explore the perceptions, experiences, and attitudes of rehabilitation professionals regarding their scholar role; (2) To identify factors that facilitate or hinder this role in their practices.

Qualitative design of a phenomenological orientation. Face-to-face interviews conducted with professionals with at least 1 year experience in stroke rehabilitation using a pre-tested interview guide. Transcripts were coded using QDA-Miner software.

Mean age of the participants was 40.7 years ± 11.2. Participants were mostly women (n = 9/11). The role of scholar emerged as not having great value. Main themes (5) emerging from the analysis are emphasis on tacit knowledge; experience and clinical intuition leading to self-confidence and comfort in clinical practice; dissatisfaction with the lack of knowledge sharing among clinicians; importance of diversifying clinical tasks; and the underdevelopment of reflective practice. Four factors identified as influencing the role of scholar: motivation, critical incident as a main trigger of reflective practice, interns facilitating reflective practice, and lack of time.

From these results emerged questions about measures to encourage the scholar role and facilitate reflective practice in stroke rehabilitation. Implications for Rehabilitation Reflective practice has to be encouraged in professional rehabilitation of stroke. Managers' involvement is crucial to promote and support the role of scholar among professionals in stroke rehabilitation. The updated knowledge and networking from reading scientific paper, participation in trainings and conferences should be systematically disseminated.