Increased mobility after stroke

BMJ 2004; 329: 1372-4

Stroke Association funded researchers have found that many people affected by stroke want to get out of their homes more often. Dr Philippa Logan and others at the University of Nottingham developed an Occupational Therapy programme aimed at improving outdoor mobility and evaluated its effectiveness. They concluded that the programme was a feasible way of helping many disabled people to get out of the house more often, and was thus successful in increasing outdoor mobility after stroke.

Not leaving the house as much as one would like can have deleterious effects upon one’s quality of life, and despite rehabilitation many people with a stroke want to get out of the house more often. Lead by Dr Philippa Logan researchers at the University of Nottingham developed an outdoor mobility programme, to be delivered by an Occupational Therapist (OT), in an attempt to help people who have had a stroke overcome barriers to outdoor mobility.

The programme involves assessing the barriers in the patient, negotiating mobility goals with them and attempting to deliver whatever interventions are considered necessary to achieve the mobility goals. Interventions such as helping the patient to return to driving are then delivered by the OT in the form of treatment sessions.

The researchers went on to evaluate the effectiveness of the programme. They found that people receiving the treatment programme were more likely to get out of the house as often as they wanted to, when compared to those who did not receive the programme.


Further details of this research and its results are outlined in the Spring 2005 Stroke News research article (82 kb) [pdf]