Governing neurorehabilitation

Person centred approaches to rehabilitation are promoted as an ethical means of addressing paternalistic power relations in clinician dominated medical encounters and improving outcomes. However, they fail to account for the complex nature of power. We sought alternative ways to explain the use of power in health service provision.

A poststructural discourse analysis using the view of power offered by Michel Foucault was undertaken. Foucault's concept of governmentality is useful to explain the way health services deploy technologies of power to achieve objectives of the state. Governmentality refers to not just political structures but all the strategies and procedures for directing human behaviour.

Our investigation uncovered a web of strategic relationships operating that were both potentially productive and problematic and illuminate how client centred approaches in neurorehabilitation intertwines its subjects in strategic power relationships that involve webs of obligations and responsibilities.

The client-professional relationship promoted in neurorehabilitation as a moral way to practice can be a tool for mastery of one over the other, and assist the client to achieve their desired ends, but also has the potential to marginalise others who are unable to shape themselves into the desired ideal client.Implications for rehabilitationThis analysis shows how power is subtle and productive in that it produces knowledge and roles for both clients and practitioners.It demonstrates how neurorehabilitation's disciplinary practices assist the client to achieve their recovery goals.It reveals how certain clients might be marginalised when they cannot shape themselves into the ideal rehabilitation client.As a final point we hope that by being aware of how power works in neurorehabilitation, practitioners can become aware of opportunities for challenging disciplinary practices that do not serve the best interest of the client.