Describing What We Do: A Qualitative Study of Clinicians' Perspectives on Classifying Rehabilitation Interventions

Abstract Objective To gain an understanding of clinical thought processes about treatment classification and description, and to identify desired characteristics of and challenges to be addressed by a future rehabilitation treatment taxonomy. Design Qualitative analysis of data collected via focus groups and semistructured interviews. Setting Inpatient rehabilitation programs. Participants Clinicians (N=84) in 7 disciplines involved in data collection for practice-based evidence studies of spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury rehabilitation. Interventions Not applicable. Main Outcome Measure Summary of themes reported by clinicians, determined by content analysis of focus group and interview transcripts. Results The multifaceted nature of rehabilitation treatment was identified as a major challenge to the process of classifying interventions. Simultaneous delivery of multiple interventions, performance of integrated tasks that challenge multiple body systems, and conversation-based treatments were reported to be difficult to classify. Clinicians reported that treatment classifications that make reference to goals of treatment were clinically intuitive, but they also reported difficulties when attempting to classify activities that could address multiple goals. These rehabilitation practitioners considered the setting in which treatment occurs, equipment used, assistance or cueing provided, type of treatment participants, and specific tasks performed to be important descriptors of their interventions. They recommended creating a classification system that can be applied at greater or lesser levels of detail depending on the purpose for which it is being used. Conclusions Treatment descriptors identified may be useful for differentiating classes of treatments or characterizing treatments within classes. Precise definition of the concept of the goal as it relates to treatment theory and definition of boundaries between treatments may aid classification of multifaceted treatment activities. A balance between detail and feasibility of use will facilitate successful clinical application of a future classification system.