Unpacking the black box of therapy – a pilot study to describe occupational therapy and physiotherapy interventions for people with stroke

Objective: To describe the components used in the practice of occupational therapy and physiotherapy for people with stroke and to examine variability between services.

Design: A time-sampling strategy in which therapists recorded their face-to-face interventions with stroke patients during 12 weeks over a total of 17 months.

Settings and subjects: Six occupational therapists and seven physiotherapists from four services (three day hospitals and one domiciliary stroke rehabilitation service) recorded interventions with 89 stroke patients recruited to a larger randomized controlled trial.

Main outcome measures: Frequencies of use of interventions, together with other details about delivery of therapy, were recorded using a data collection booklet and coding system designed by the participating therapists.

Results: The median treatment time for a session was 45 minutes. The most frequently recorded components of physiotherapy intervention were ‘walking’, ‘standing balance’ and ‘upper limb movement pattern’, and of occupational therapy ‘physical function’, ‘social and leisure activities' and ‘other’. There was variability between the services in terms of median treatment time, use of intervention codes, frequency of treatment sessions, amount of time spent working with assistance and amount of group work.

Conclusions: The findings support the view that occupational therapy and physiotherapy with people with stroke are not homogeneous activities, and vary between therapists and services. Recommendations include further development of the tool, and use of other methodologies to explore the process and nature of stroke rehabilitation.