Objective: To develop a rehabilitation goal menu based on understanding the specific goals that are important to neurological inpatients and that fall within commonly identified rehabilitation domains.
Design: Qualitative methods (semi-structured interview, focus groups) to develop a goal menu followed by cross-sectional study to measure participants' goal rankings.
Setting: Rehabilitation hospital in Saudi Arabia.
Subjects: A total of 130 participants with neurological injury.
Main measures: Participant rankings of rehabilitation goals and self-reported level of difficulty in areas such as mobility, self-care, accessibility, productivity, and leisure.
Results: A 10-item goal menu was developed based on initial focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and literature review. The overall highest ranked rehabilitation goal was Functional Mobility/Locomotion, followed by Self-Care and Religious/Life Philosophy. Self-reported level of difficulty with mobility was strongly associated with the ranking of Functional Mobility/Locomotion as a rehabilitation goal. However, there was little correspondence between reported difficulty and priority ranking of self-care. Subsequent factor analysis of detailed goal items suggest that the goal menu could be reduced to seven items.
Conclusions: This study provided an understanding of which rehabilitation goals are important to Saudi clients with neurological disorders that could be used to facilitate their contribution to the goal-setting process.
Keywords: Goal-setting; neurological rehabilitation; rehabilitation programme.
© The Author(s) 2014.