The team also wants to know whether 'work' is the most important outcome of vocational rehabilitation for people following a brain injury and if there are any other important outcomes that should be measured.
To do this, a series of focus groups and telephone consultations have been conducted. The following groups were asked what they felt were the most important outcomes of a service designed to prepare and support brain injured people for returning to work:
- 72 people who had sustained a traumatic brain injury in the last few weeks;
- 13 people who sustained their brain injury between 2 and 39 years ago;
- 13 healthcare professionals experienced in working with brain injured people;
- 11 employers who knew people with a traumatic brain injury.
Distinct differences were found between the groups. People who had recently sustained their injury were most keen to return to work and overcome their difficulties as quickly as possible. Those who sustained their injury some years previously felt that it would be most important to rebuild self-confidence and to understand the impact of their injury on their lives.
Employers were more likely to focus on good communication between them, the brain injured person and the therapist during the return to work process. Healthcare professionals told us it was more important to improve quality of life than return to work.
These new insights indicate that we should not measure the success of specialist vocational rehabilitation only by how often brain injured people return to work or education. We also need to measure other outcomes, including quality of life, employer communication and the brain injured person's understanding of the impact of their injury.
Many Headway members participated in the project. The researchers stated: "We would like to thank all the people, including many recruited from the Headway website, who gave up their time and travelled long distances to take part. Your input was invaluable and we are incredibly grateful for your time. We also wish to thank the many who expressed an interest but were unable to make the sessions.
"We are continuing to research into the lives of people with traumatic brain injury. Our latest project is concerned with developing a peer coaching intervention to discover what helps or hinders participation in social and leisure activities following traumatic brain injury."
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