Educational media utilization for rehabilitation among community-dwelling stroke survivors and their caregivers: a pilot study

Background: Recently, there has been an increasing number of stroke patients. Those who survive still need continuous rehabilitation after being discharged from the hospital. The information and knowledge on stroke rehabilitation at home is crucial for these patients and their caregivers. However, there has never been a study of educational media on rehabilitation for those patients and their caregivers in Thailand. Objective: To explore the educational media used in stroke rehabilitation, list their benefits, and the most satisfying media type for stroke participants and their caregivers after hospital discharge. Materials and methods: Twenty-eight stroke patients and twenty-one primary caregivers from two Subdistrict Municipalities and two Districts in Chaing Mai province were recruited using purposive sampling methods. All participants were aged 18 years and over and could communicate in Thai. All the stroke participants had no cognitive impairment screening by the Mental Status Examination-10 (MSET-10) and had self-rehabilitation therapy at home. A Questionnaire on the use of educational media in stroke rehabilitation with the index of item objective congruence (IOC) range between 0.67-1.00 was used for data collection. The statistics used were descriptive. Results: Stroke patients used information obtained primarily from medical personnel in the community (78.57%), while caregivers used advice from medical personnel the most in the hospitals (57.14%). Regarding the highest satisfaction with educational media, 59% of stroke patients and 42% of caregivers were satisfied with advice from medical personnel in the community. Stroke patients revealed that using a combination of advice from medical professionals, brochure-based media, and only document media was the most beneficial in providing knowledge about rehabilitation. For caregivers, the use of a combination of advice from medical professionals along with paper and video media, and the use of knowledge gained from online channels were the most beneficial. Conclusion: Rehabilitation education materials used by stroke patients and their caregivers at home offer the highest level of satisfaction for the patients and caregivers if the medium of people who can give advice and communicate on issues meets their needs. In addition, patients and caregivers agreed that rehabilitation education should include more than one form of media for maximum benefit. Therefore, health professionals should consider the format of educational media appropriate to the needs of service recipients to be able to use them most effectively.