A comparison of time use on an acute rehabilitation unit: subjects with and without a stroke.

This study describes the time use of subjects on a mixed diagnosis inpatient rehabilitation unit. Twelve subjects were observed during two days: one weekday and one weekend day for 8 hours each observational day. Seven subjects had sustained a stroke (CVA) and 5 subjects had other diagnoses (non-CVA). The observers used the behavioral mapping technique to obtain an objective description of the subject's time use and the admission, discharge, and efficiency scores of the Functional Independence Measure (FIM) to obtain a measure of functional activity level.During the weekday observations, the subjects who had a stroke spent more time inactive, 25.0%, as compared to the subjects who had other diagnoses, 15.0%. In addition, the subjects who had a stroke spent more time alone, 53.6%, while the other subjects spent 38.8% time alone. While both amounts of inactivity and time alone increased during the weekend observation, the pattern remained the same. All FIM measures were lower for the subjects who had a stroke as compared to subjects who had other diagnoses.It appears that those who are recovering from a stroke show a discrepancy in self-directed activity level from those who did not have a stroke, while hospitalized on the same unit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]