Individualised home-based rehabilitation after stroke in eastern Finland--the client's perspective.

Reintegration into society is one of the main purposes of post-stroke rehabilitation. The experiences of clients returning home after a stroke have been studied before. There is, however, little knowledge about activities carried out during home-based rehabilitation interventions and about the involvement of clients in the process.

Physiotherapists' accounts of their clients in geriatric inpatient rehabilitation.

This article aims to describe how physiotherapists working with frail older people talk about their clients. Semi-structured qualitative interviews with physiotherapists (n = 11) were audio recorded, transcribed and analysed using discourse analysis. Two accounts were identified: (i) older adults as recipients of a treatment intervention at the rehabilitation centre, with the dimensions 'a focus on physical impairments' and 'a focus on social needs' and (ii) older adults as partners in an exercise intervention to support their everyday living at home.

Construction of group exercise sessions in geriatric inpatient rehabilitation.

There is little knowledge about the ways geriatric physiotherapy is being carried out in practice and about the situational construction of formal policies for promoting physical activity. This article examines how professional physiotherapists and frail community-dwelling older adults as their clients use talk and action to construct a group exercise session in an inpatient rehabilitation setting in Finland. The analysis of 7 group exercise sessions with a total of 52 clients and 9 professional physiotherapists revealed 3 different practitioner approaches, which served different functions in older adults' empowerment and lifestyle activity change.

Validity of the Postural Control and Balance for Stroke test.

Background And Purpose: To determine the construct and predictive validity and sensitivity of the sub-scale items for postural changes, sitting balance and standing balance of the Postural Control and Balance for Stroke (PCBS) test over a 90-day follow-up.

Method: In the initial phase of stroke the PCBS test scores were compared with values obtained for the Barthel Index (BI) and the four neuropsychological domains most widely studied in the literature: memory; language; visuo-spatial functions; and visual inattention. The ability of the PCBS test at an early stage to predict functional status, as measured by the BI, and tendency to falls at 90 days after stroke was studied.

Clinical supervision as an interaction between the clinical educator and the student.

The interaction between clinical educators and students is regarded as the strongest element in developing expertise and in forming students' professional identity in clinical education. Although clinical education has been studied in physiotherapy, the natural interaction between clinical educators and students has remained unanalyzed. The aim of this study was to examine how supervised learning sessions during patient treatment were constructed.

The effect of two physiotherapy approaches on physical and cognitive functions and independent coping at home in stroke rehabilitation. A preliminary follow-up study.

Purpose: Activating physiotherapy was used to support the principle of post stroke functional recovery as a learning process which requires both cognitive and physical actions. The purpose of the present preliminary study was to examine the influence of activating physiotherapy on stroke patients' cognitive and physical functions and independent living at home compared with traditional treatment over a 12-month follow-up.

Methods: The 40 patients who received activating physiotherapy were compared with 40 patients receiving traditional therapy.

Discourse analytic study of counseling sessions in stroke physiotherapy.

Studies on the interaction between physiotherapists and patients during treatment sessions have found low levels of communicative participation by patients and lack of direct influence by patients on the content of their treatment. This article reports the results of 7 counseling sessions in which physiotherapists and patients with stroke and their caregivers discussed the patients' postural control and balance, which had been tested and videotaped at different stages of the rehabilitation process. The physiotherapists' discourses relating to the videotaped test performances were either brief comments on the patient's performance or critical appraisals with references to difficulties encountered during performance.

The reliability, distribution, and responsiveness of the Postural Control and Balance for Stroke Test.

Objectives: To determine the inter- and intrarater reliability of the Postural Control and Balance for Stroke (PCBS) test and to assess its distribution and responsiveness to changes during 1-year follow-up.

Design: Intrarater reliability of the PCBS test was assessed by comparing the repeat ratings of videotaped test performances by each of the 5 raters. Interrater reliability was assessed by comparing the ratings of the videotaped test performances between the raters.

Decreased neck muscle strength is highly associated with pain in cervical dystonia patients treated with botulinum toxin injections.

Objectives: To compare the isometric neck muscle strength of cervical dystonia patients treated with botulinum toxin injections with that of healthy control subjects and to evaluate the association between neck strength, neck pain, and disability in these patients.

Design: Clinical cross-sectional study.

Setting: Outpatient rehabilitation and neurology clinics in a Finnish hospital.

Relationships between standing balance and symmetry measurements in patients following recent strokes (3 weeks or less) or older strokes (6 months or more).

Background And Purpose: The Functional Standing Balance (FSB) Scale was designed to obtain measurements of standing balance and to identify the problems typically faced by people with stroke. The purpose of this study was to investigate the validity of measurements obtained with the FSB Scale for use in the acute and chronic phases of stroke by comparing the measurements obtained with the FSB Scale with those obtained for postural sway and lateral symmetry by use of a force platform.

Subjects And Methods: Measurements were obtained for 26 people with recent strokes (ie, strokes within 3 weeks of data collection) and for 28 people with long-standing strokes (ie, strokes of 6 months' duration or older).