Increasing Health Care Provider Awareness and Education on Assistive Technology to Improve Patient Safety at Home

Background and/or Objectives: To increase health care provider familiarity with publicly available Assistive Technology (AT) that can be utilized to improve brain injury (BI) patient safety at home after discharge from inpatient rehabilitation

Design: Prospective cohort study

Setting: Inpatient rehabilitation facility

Participants: Health care providers including physicians / physicians-in-training

Interventions: 1-hour educational presentation providing an overview of commercially available AT devices for improving BI patient safety at home through communication and memory aids, medication management, and safety monitoring

Main Outcome Measures: Provider levels of (1) awareness of AT devices, (2) anticipated use of AT devices among BI patients, (3) comfort with discussing AT devices with BI patients/caregivers before and after intervention

Results: Study participants (n=10) included 2 physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) attendings, 7 PM&R residents (post-graduate year [PGY]2 n=2, PGY3 n=3, PGY4 n=2), and 1 fourth-year medical student. Before and after the presentation, study participants listed an average of 2.4 and 6.8 AT devices, respectively (+4.4, p=4.4049e-05), that they feel comfortable discussing with patients/caregivers. On a scale of 1 to 5 with 1=strongly disagree and 5=strongly agree, the average scores for the main outcome measures pre- and post-intervention were as follows: familiarity with AT devices: 2.5 and 3.8 (+1.3, p=1.8126e-04); plan to use AT devices with patients: 2.5 and 4.1 (+1.6, p=5.3674e-04); and comfort with educating patients/family about AT devices: 2.3 and 4.0 (+1.7, p=3.0702e-04).

Conclusions: This study showed that participating in a 1-hour educational session was effective in improving provider awareness and willingness to promote the use of AT devices for BI patients upon discharge from inpatient rehabilitation. Future interventions include a follow-up hands-on demonstration for health care providers, including physicians and physical/occupational/speech therapists, on how to use AT devices and ultimately train BI patients/caregivers how to use these devices at home.