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The rehabilitation process after a stroke transits through different treatment options organised in different settings, which thereby structure the patient's possibilities for constructing identity. To investigate how physiotherapy located in hospitals, municipal rehabilitation, and private clinics during rehabilitation after stroke provide different practices related to the patient body and how this creates different and opposed positions for construction identity after stroke. A qualitative longitudinal study based on empirical data that followed 12 patients with stroke through their rehabilitation, consisted of observations of interactions between physiotherapists and patients, as well as individual in-depth interviews with physiotherapists and patients. Building on Bourdieu's notions of field, capital, and habitus, different bodily habitus seemed to work as capital throughout the rehabilitation process. Positions available for habitus were around the disembodied body, the malfunctioning body, the defective body, the remodelled body, and the body altered. These different bodies interwove and shifted across the different sites and phases of the patient's rehabilitation. The relations between patients, physiotherapists and field constructed different bodily positions in the physiotherapeutic practice, where some bodies were included while other bodies were excluded. This shaped varying practices and different potentials for the patients' identity reconstruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The literature on participation in rehabilitation by those with the most severe acquired brain injury is very sparse. Objectives: The aim of this study was to explore how physiotherapists promote the participation of patients with severe brain injury in therapeutic and daily-life situations in early rehabilitation. Methods: In a qualitative study employing phenomenological philosophy, several video-recorded sessions of patients with a Rancho Los Amigos Scale score of 3-4 were analysed. Empirical themes were identified by four different investigators through individual and consensus-based analyses. The results were theoretically stated and supported. Results: In an effort to achieve patient participation, the following four themes seemed to be significant: 1) consciously encountering the patient in the moment, 2) the employment of concepts surrounding the interaction between body and environment, 3) timing and flow of the activities and 4) comprehensive bodily support, guidance and facilitation of the activity and participation in daily-life skills. Conclusions: The dynamic use of these four themes seemed to enrich early rehabilitation interventions for patients with severe brain injury and low level of consciousness in terms of their participation and functioning in everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim:The purpose of the study was to shed light on the participatory aspect of early rehabilitation, when contact, communication and interaction between the patients and the professionals is minimal, because of the patients’ severe brain injury and complex conditions. Methodology:A qualitative study was chosen. The field study involved five patients (aged 39–64) and included: participant observation and video recordings of 41 rehabilitation situations, five individual interviews and one focus group interview with multidisciplinary rehabilitation experts; together with document review of hospital charts and memos. The data were analyzed using a four-step phenomenological analysis and NVivo 10. Major findings:Participation comes into play in various practices around the patient. Three main themes seem to be important: (1) The dynamic interplay of the multidisciplinary team as an element that influences participation, (2) significant relational encounters and meetings as aspects that impact on the promotion of participation, and (3) significant frameworks that affect involvement, engagement and participation. Principal conclusion:Patients’ participation and recovery are facilitated by a combination of the clinicians’ professional skills, their ability to create a rehabilitation environment in which patients can perform activities, the right framework for the meeting, and a suitable approach, to facilitate fruitful interaction with the patients. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]