A Survey on Clinicians' Perspectives and Usage of Rehabilitation Technology

Research Objectives: To investigate clinicians’ opinions, experiences, and usage of rehabilitation technology in their respective practice areas.

Design: Cross-sectional study

Setting: English online survey

Participants: Occupational therapists, occupational therapy assistants, physical therapists, physical therapy assistants, and speech language pathologists from North America (n=108).

Interventions: Not applicable.

Main Outcome Measures: Responses to multiple choice, Likert-scale, and open-ended questions about clinicians’ demographics, experiences, education, funding, and opinions regarding rehabilitation technology.

Results: This survey explores clinicians’ use, knowledge, comfort, and motivation regarding the implementation of rehabilitation technology in daily practice. Participants were occupational therapists (n=46/108, 42.6%), physical therapists (n=33/108, 30.6%), physical therapist assistants (n=13/108, 12.0%), speech language pathologists (n=6/108, 5.6%), and occupational therapy assistants (n=3/108, 2.8%). Participants reported working in one or more of the following settings: outpatient (n=31/108 28.7%), private practice (n=22/108, 20.4%), inpatient rehab (n=20/108, 18.5%), acute care (n=22/108, 20.4%), home health care (n=14/108, 13.0%), skilled nursing facilities (n=21/108, 19.4%), community-based settings (n=6/108, 5.6%), and other settings (n=16/108, 14.8%). Approximately half (n=53/108, 49.1%) of the participants agreed that they were motivated to learn about new rehabilitation technology, and less than one-fifth (n=18/108, 16.7%) strongly agreed that they felt comfortable implementing new rehabilitation technology. When analyzing all the clinician responses except for 2011-2020 graduates that were not taught about rehabilitation technology in school or fieldwork, we found that very few reported feeling strongly that they received adequate rehabilitation technology education in school (n=2/99, 2.0%) and less than 5% (n=4/99, 4.0%) of them felt very prepared to use rehabilitation technology following graduation.

Conclusions: The findings of this survey identify gaps in clinicians’ readiness to use rehabilitation technology. These results indicate the need for continuing education opportunities to help clinicians navigate, implement, and advocate for rehabilitation technology in their current practice.

Author(s) Disclosures: None disclosed.