Showering habits: time, steps, and products used after brain injury.

Objective: This pilot study describes the showering habits of people with brain injury (BI) compared with those of people without BI (WBI).

Method: The showering habits of 10 people with BI and 10 people WBI were measured and compared. A videotaped session recorded and documented the shower routine.

Results: The BI group spent longer time showering, used more steps, and used fewer products than the WBI group. A moderately significant relationship was found between time and age (r = .46, p = .041). Similarly, we found significant correlations between number of steps and number of products used (r = .64, p = .002) and between the number of products used and education (r = .47, p = .044).

Conclusion: Results suggest that people with BI have showering habits that differ from those WBI. Correlations, regardless of group, showed that older people showered longer, and people with more education used more showering products.