Unpacking how trust, communication and flow interact to sustain quality relationships between disabled people, family and support workers: a realist qualitative study.

Purpose: Many disabled people require support workers to complete personal care, daily tasks and participate in life roles. Due to the intimate nature of community disability support in domestic environments, understanding what facilitates positive relationships is paramount. We examined the intricate interplay of context and mechanisms that drive positive relationship outcomes for disabled people, their family members and support workers.

Exploring In-Session Engagement in Equine-Assisted Services for Children and Youth Experiencing Disability: A Scoping Review.

The purpose of this review was to identify and describe the evidence about children and youth engagement during equine-assisted services (EAS). Five databases (Scopus, Web of Science, PsycINFO, CINAHL, and MEDLINE) were systematically searched. Included studies reported research about EAS conducted in children and youth and presented findings about in-session engagement or associated concepts such as motivation, involvement, and participation.

Designing studies and reviews to produce informative, trustworthy evidence about complex interventions in rehabilitation: a narrative review and commentary.

According to Cochrane Rehabilitation's recently published definition for research purposes, rehabilitation is inherently complex. Rehabilitation teams frequently implement multiple strategies concurrently, draw on input from a range of different health professionals, target multiple outcomes, and personalize therapeutic plans. The success of rehabilitation lies not only in the specific therapies employed, but also in how they are delivered, when they are delivered, and the capability and willingness of patients to engage in them.

Developing relevant community mental health programmes in North India: five questions we ask when co-producing knowledge with experts by experience.

Knowledge co-production can improve the quality and accessibility of health, and also benefit service users, allowing them to be recognised as skilled and capable. Yet despite these clear benefits, there are inherent challenges in the power relations of co-production, particularly when experts by experience (EBE) are structurally disadvantaged in communication skills or literacy. The processes of how knowledge is co-produced and negotiated are seldom described.

United and flexible: a collaborative approach to early vocational rehabilitation on a spinal unit. A realist study.

Study Design: Qualitative study using realist review.

Objectives: To conceptualise how Early Intervention Vocational Rehabilitation (EIVR) functions within inpatient multidisciplinary contexts during spinal cord injury (SCI) rehabilitation.

Setting: New Zealand Spinal Unit.

Early Opportunities to Explore Occupational Identity Change: Qualitative Study of Return-To-Work Experiences After Stroke.

Background: Rates of return-to-work after stroke are low, yet work is known to positively impact people's wellbeing and overall health outcomes.

Objective: To understand return-to-work trajectories, barriers encountered, and resources that may be used to better support participants during early recovery and rehabilitation.

Participants: The experiences of 31 participants (aged 25-76 years) who had or had not returned to work after stroke were explored.

A realist review of residential treatment for adults with substance use disorder.

Issues: Completion of residential treatment for substance use disorder (SUD) relates to improvements in substance use and mental health. Findings from systematic reviews have been equivocal about which interventions work best for clients. There has been limited attention to the theories that explain the effectiveness of residential treatment.

Flourishing together: research protocol for developing methods to better include disabled people's knowledge in health policy development.

Background: To positively impact the social determinants of health, disabled people need to contribute to policy planning and programme development. However, they report barriers to engaging meaningfully in consultation processes. Additionally, their recommendations may not be articulated in ways that policy planners can readily use.

Development of a Programme Theory for Early Intervention Vocational Rehabilitation: A Realist Literature Review.

Purpose Little is currently known about how early intervention vocational rehabilitation (EIVR) works for people with newly acquired neurological conditions such as traumatic brain injury, acquired brain injury and spinal cord injury. This study aims, from a realist framework, to identify relevant literature and develop an initial programme theory to understand how EIVR might work for people experiencing acquired neurological disability. Realist reviews are ideally placed to address the identified knowledge gap as they assist in gaining a deeper understanding of how the intervention works, for whom it works best, and the contexts that promote the activation of desired outcomes.

Early vocational rehabilitation for people with spinal cord injury: a research protocol using realist synthesis and interviews to understand how and why it works.

Introduction: Return to work after spinal cord injury (SCI) is linked to well-being and better physical and mental health outcomes. In New Zealand, work rates after SCI are lower than the general population. Vocational rehabilitation is one method of supporting return to work.

Access to community support workers during hospital admission for people with spinal cord injury: a pilot study.

Study Design: A descriptive qualitative study.

Objectives: To evaluate a pilot project enabling people with spinal cord injury (SCI) to have their support workers accompany them into a non-SCI specialist/public hospital (excluding ICU) to perform selected care.

Setting: The study was conducted in New Zealand.

Implementing a 'Safe Recovery' fall prevention program: Refining intervention theory using realist methods.

Objectives: This research aimed to explain how the Safe Recovery Programme (SRP) may best work to reduce falls in older adults undergoing rehabilitation in four wards in an older person's health and rehabilitation service.

Methods: Qualitative realist methods were used, including surveys completed by patients and staff, and qualitative interviews or focus groups exploring views of patients, ward staff and SRP educators.

Results: Emphasising different types of information for patients with different pre-existing understandings may facilitate their responses to SRP messaging.

Using cannabis for pain management after spinal cord injury: a qualitative study.

Study Design: A descriptive qualitative study.

Objectives: To explore why individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) choose to use cannabis to manage their pain and their experiences in doing so.

Setting: Community-dwelling adults with SCI in New Zealand.

Evaluating the effectiveness of therapeutic horse riding for children and young people experiencing disability: a single-case experimental design study.

Therapeutic horse riding aims to improve the health of children and young people experiencing disability; however, its benefits across a range of health domains, particularly the impact on participation outcomes, are not well known. This research evaluated to what extent there was a change in riders balance, functional performance, social responsiveness, quality of life and participation outcomes as a result of therapeutic horse riding. A multiple-baseline across participants ( = 12) single-case experimental design, with randomly allocated baseline phase lengths, quantitatively evaluated how riders responded to a 20-week intervention.

Optimizing the real-world impact of rehabilitation reviews: increasing the relevance and usability of systematic reviews in rehabilitation.

Background: Despite a growing portfolio of rehabilitation reviews, uptake of review findings into practice remains slow, with review findings perceived to be lacking in relevance and usability for stakeholders. Key aspects of review design, production and dissemination have been identified to contribute to this knowledge translation (KT) gap.

Aim: The aim of this study is to identify strategies relevant to rehabilitation review design, production and dissemination which have the potential to optimize uptake of review findings into practice.

Compared to what? An analysis of the management of control groups in Cochrane reviews in neurorehabilitation.

Background: Control groups are used in clinical trials to increase confidence that any improvements in patient outcomes are due the therapy under investigation and not to other factors. The reported effect size of any intervention is estimated from differences in outcomes achieved by intervention participants in comparison to control participants. Clinical heterogeneity in control groups across different studies can make the pooling of data from these studies in one meta-analysis questionable or reduce certainty in their results.

Wrestling with uncertainty after mild traumatic brain injury: a mixed methods study.

Our objective was to explore the intersection between mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) recovery experiences and injury understandings, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative component was a descriptive case-control study comparing participants ( = 76) who had recovered or not recovered after an MTBI, across demographic and psychological variables. A subset of participants ( = 10) participated in a semi-structured interview to explore experiences of recovery in more detail.

Untangling chronic pain and post-concussion symptoms: the significance of depression.

Objectives: Post-concussion-like symptoms (PCS) are common in patients without a history of brain injury, such as those with chronic pain (CP). This exploratory study examined neuro-cognitive and psychological functioning in patients with PCS following mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) or CP, to assess unique and overlapping phenomenology.

Methods: In this case-control study, participants (n = 102) with chronic symptoms after mTBI (n = 45) were matched with mTBI recovered (n = 31) and CP groups (n = 26), on age, gender, ethnicity and education.

What's wrong with me? seeking a coherent understanding of recovery after mild traumatic brain injury.

Purpose: Qualitative research examining experiences of recovering from mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) is limited. Findings from quantitative studies regarding predictors of persisting symptoms are inconsistent with limited attention directed to capturing broad perspectives and priorities of the wider stakeholders. More flexible research approaches may help advance the field.

Life goals and social identity in people with severe acquired brain injury: an interpretative phenomenological analysis.

Purpose: While there is a growing body of literature exploring life goals in rehabilitation, little research has been undertaken that includes the voice of the end-user. This study examined the views and experiences of people with severe acquired brain injury regarding the place of "life goals" in residential rehabilitation.

Methods: Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to collect and analyze data from five semi-structured interviews with participants in a residential rehabilitation setting.

A more "normal" life: residents', family, staff, and managers' experience of active support at a residential facility for people with physical and intellectual impairments.

Background: Active support (AS) has gained popularity as an approach for assisting people with intellectual disability to engage more fully in everyday activities. Although research has identified changes in the extent that residents are engaged in meaningful activities, the experience of stakeholders such as residents, staff, and family in AS is underexplored.

Method: A general inductive approach was used to analyse focus group and interview transcripts of residents (n = 4), staff (n = 13), and family (n = 2) about their experience of involvement in an AS pilot project at one residential care facility in New Zealand.