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Research Spotlight: Understanding the Person Behind the Patient in Stroke Rehabilitation

  • SH
  • 1 hour ago
  • 3 min read

Stroke rehabilitation focuses on helping people regain mobility, function and independence after a life-changing event. For Catherine Vingerhoets, RVH's Outpatient Rehabilitation Clinical Team Lead, there was another layer of patient care she wanted to better understand.


Drawing on her experience as a physiotherapist working with stroke survivors, families and care partners, Catherine became interested in how healthcare professionals gather information about their patients' values, preferences, and life circumstances and how those insights are shared across teams, and how patients and families perceive these interactions during rehabilitation.


"Healthcare is about helping people, and it's ultimately challenging if you have a limited understanding of who they are, what matters most to them, or the circumstances they face,” says Catherine.


This interest became the focus of her doctoral research at the University of Otago in New Zealand, where she explored the topic from multiple perspectives.


Rehabilitation clinicians first described using a range of formal and informal strategies to gather this information. While assessments, goal setting, and family meetings played an important role, valuable insights were also gained through conversations, observations, and everyday interactions. Clinicians also emphasized that understanding a patient relies on collaborative information sharing and communication across the rehabilitation team, building positive relationships with patients and families, adopting flexible approaches, and considering each individual's unique context.


Stroke survivors, families, and care partners described how health professionals' understanding of them as individuals shaped their rehabilitation experience and influenced their care throughout their recovery journey.


A key theme that emerged amongst these participants was the importance of being seen "beyond the surface" - not simply as a stroke patient, but recognizing them as an individual with unique goals, values, culture, and life experiences. As patients navigated the uncertainty of life after stroke, they wanted to feel recognized and valued as people first. Relationships and communication played an important role in these experiences. They described feeling more willing to share information and engage in rehabilitation when they felt heard, understood, and trusted.


Building on insights from clinicians, stroke survivors, and families, the final phase of Catherine's research focused on developing and evaluating an interprofessional professional development program called Getting to Know Our Patients and What Matters. The program was designed to support clinicians in eliciting and incorporating patients' values, preferences, and circumstances into rehabilitation care and was found to be both practical and acceptable to implement in a busy inpatient rehabilitation setting.


Conducted across both New Zealand and Canada, the research demonstrated a remarkable consistency in participant perspectives despite differences in healthcare settings and systems. Regardless of country, people wanted to be treated as individuals, families wanted to be included in care, and clinicians faced similar challenges balancing person-centred care with organizational demands. The consistency of these findings suggests their relevance extends beyond a single healthcare setting or national context.


Collectively, the research suggests that understanding a patient's values, preferences, and circumstances is not a simple information-gathering task. Rather, it is an ongoing, dynamic process that develops through relationships, communication, and collaboration among patients, families, and healthcare professionals. The findings reinforce the idea that truly patient-centred rehabilitation requires clinicians to see patients as whole people, not just as individuals with a diagnosis.


By identifying effective strategies for eliciting this information and creating a practical training program for clinicians, the research provides a framework for improving patient engagement, enhancing individualized rehabilitation planning, and ultimately supporting better rehabilitation outcomes.


In broader terms, it contributes to the growing body of evidence that successful healthcare depends not only on clinical expertise and scientific evidence, but also on understanding the person receiving care.




 
 
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