Deans' stroke musings: The training and practice in neurological rehabilitation theories in the occupational therapy management of stroke patients in South Africa

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

The training and practice in neurological rehabilitation theories in the occupational therapy management of stroke patients in South Africa

I wonder how the rest of the world creates OT rehabilitation theories.

Little wonder that stroke patients don't recover if our therapists don't even have a standardized way to follow proven protocols.
http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10539/10691/Juliana%20Freeme%209902407V%20research%20report.pdf?sequence=1
ABSTRACT
Recent studies to determine appropriate theories of adult neurological rehabilitation for South African Occupational Therapy (OT) curricula are non-existing. Seven OT training centres in South Africa participated in a survey to determine the content of the OT neurological rehabilitation curricula. The results showed that there are no specific requirements for the assessment and treatment of stroke patients in the OT curricula and standardized assessments are not commonly taught at an undergraduate level. A second survey was conducted by means of a questionnaire to OT clinicians in the field of neurological rehabilitation. The sample consisted of 29 subjects. The questionnaire surveyed the current settings where stroke patients are receiving OT, the subjects’ treatment protocols with stroke patients, and their use evidence based practice (EBP). The most commonly use theory was neurodevelopmental therapy (NDT) and the majority of subjects received training in this theory. Standardized assessments were not used to measure the effectiveness of treatment, therefore OTs were unsure of the effect of their interventions. OTs also had difficulty explaining their reasons for choice of theories and their theoretical justification was not based on scientific evidence. Only 51.85% of the sample usually uses EBP, and the subjects’ own experience had the greatest effect on their use of EBP. Two factors, the lack of time and lack of knowledge impeded the subjects’ use of EBP the most. There is however a lack of sufficient evidence regarding which neurological rehabilitation theories are the most effective and therefore more research in the South African and OT contexts is needed.