Critical care patients barriers & facilitators to early rehabilitation
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Using the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) to explore critical care patients’ perceived barriers and facilitators to early rehabilitation: A Qualitative Study
IRAS ID
241137
Contact name
Catherine Lawrence
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University College London Hospital Trust
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Z6364106/2018/05/120, UCL Data Protection
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
Research has shown that exercise and early movement can help patients to recover during their critical care stays (intensive and high dependency care). Therefore, physiotherapists often give patients exercises and help them to get out of bed as soon as possible. This is called ‘rehabilitation’ and it aims to help patients to regain their muscle strength and independence.
Studies have shown that rehabilitation is safe and achievable for critical care patients. However, the number of patients taking part in rehabilitation on critical care wards remains inconsistent. There has been some research looking at the possible reasons for this, but it has mainly focused on the views of healthcare professionals and organisational issues, for example, limited resources. There is very little known about how patients feel about participating in rehabilitation at this stage in their hospital stay and what influences’ their decision on whether to take part. It is important to explore experiences of rehabilitation and understand what factors (e.g. motivation, support, fear) might help or limit patient participation on critical care.
Therefore, this study aims to explore the rehabilitation experiences of patients and identify what influences a patient’s decision whether to take part in rehabilitation on critical care.
The research team will carry out one-off, in-depth interviews with adult patients from UK critical care units who have received or been offered rehabilitation. The interviewers will ask people to talk about their recent experiences of rehabilitation. A framework, commonly used in health research to look at influences of behaviour will be used to guide the discussion. Using this framework will help the researchers to understand possible factors (known as the barriers and facilitators) that might contribute to a patient’s decision on whether or not to take part in rehabilitation.REC name
London - Dulwich Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/LO/1482
Date of REC Opinion
17 Aug 2018
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion