Relationship of therapeutic recreation inpatient rehabilitation interventions and patient characteristics to outcomes following spinal cord injury: the SCIRehab project.

Objective: To investigate associations of therapeutic recreation (TR) interventions during inpatient rehabilitation for patients with traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) with functional, participation, and quality of life outcomes.

Methods: In this prospective observational study, data were obtained from systematic recording of TR services by certified TR specialists, chart review, and patient interview.

Results: TR interventions, including exposure to community settings and leisure activities, add to the variance explained (in addition to the strong predictors of injury classification, admission motor Functional Independence Measure (FIM), and other patient characteristics) in outcomes at the time of rehabilitation discharge (FIM, discharge to home) and at the 1-year injury anniversary (FIM, working or being in school, residing at home, and societal participation as measured by the Craig Handicap Assessment and Reporting Technique (CHART)).

The SCIRehab project: treatment time spent in SCI rehabilitation. Therapeutic recreation treatment time during inpatient rehabilitation.

Objective: Following spinal cord injury (SCI), certified therapeutic recreation specialists (CTRSs) work with patients during rehabilitation to re-create leisure lifestyles. Although there is much literature available to describe the benefits of recreation, little has been written about the process of inpatient or outpatient rehabilitation therapeutic recreation (TR) programs or the effectiveness of such programs. To delineate how TR time is used during inpatient rehabilitation for SCI.

SCIRehab Project series: the therapeutic recreation taxonomy.

Background/objective: Outcomes research of therapeutic recreation (TR) activities and interventions for spinal cord injury (SCI) rehabilitation is made more difficult by a lack of uniform descriptions and the absence of a formal treatments classification system (taxonomy). The objective of this study was to describe a taxonomy developed by Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialists.

Methods: TR lead clinicians and researchers from 6 SCI rehabilitation centers developed a TR documentation system to describe the details of each TR session involving patients with SCI enrolled in the SCIRehab study.