Pushing and guiding me towards home; patients' perspectives of person-centred physiotherapy in Intensive Care.

Purpose: Person-centred physiotherapy in Intensive Care Units (ICU) supports patients' early rehabilitation. Yet little is known about the activity required to enable person-centred physiotherapy in this setting. This study explores the experiences and interpretations of people who received physiotherapy.
Methods: A qualitative study using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was conducted. Eight participants, recruited from a Ventilation Unit in Northwest England, were interviewed. Data were transcribed and managed using NVivo 12 software.
Results: Participants described being "pushed" and guided by physiotherapists. The "emotional" pushing through motivation and encouragement, and "physical" pushing through setting goals, were perceived as person-centred activities, despite physiotherapists initially directing them. Other important aspects of individualised care were feeling safe and understanding how their body had changed.
Conclusions: Patients viewed physiotherapist led rehabilitation in ICU as being person-centred, despite the lack of collaboration during early recovery, because they were too ill. Models of person-centred physiotherapy could be made more applicable to clinical settings by fully integrating the patient perspective.