Clinical Strategies to Increase Client Adherence to Home Exercise Programs

Abstract

Providing a home exercise program to patients is one of the most fundamental aspects of therapy in outpatient rehabilitation due to the potential for restoring an individual’s strength and functional abilities following a trauma or musculoskeletal condition. Whilst there are notable advantages to client’s whom engage in their home exercise program, non-compliance has shown to be as high as 50-65% for clients with general musculoskeletal conditions. Many suggest that non-compliant patient behaviors are attributed to poor healthy literacy and poor self-efficacy. The purpose for the capstone project and experiential is to improve rehabilitation education provided by occupational therapists to reduce patient non-compliance behaviors to HEPs as a result of poor health literacy through the implementation of 15-minute telehealth appointments focused on HEP education. Take-aways for clinical practice include that the intervention group reported lower pain levels and reduced disability as measured by the QDASH. Additionally, sixty six percent of respondents reported that their HEP helped them recover from their injury and felt as though the 15-minute telehealth appointments prompted them to complete their HEP as prescribed by their therapist.