By Simone Dorsch and Coralie EnglishAssociate Professor Coralie English is a physiotherapist and a stroke clinical trialist. Her research focuses on understanding the health benefits of physical activity and sedentary behaviour for people after stroke, as well as optimal models of improving walking and arm function early after stroke.This Blog is written in two parts.The [...]
Why train cadence?The walking of stroke survivors is on average half the speed and cadence of people without stroke.What is cadence?Cadence is defined as a rhythmic flow of sounds or music from a metronome or digitally manipulated music. The stroke survivor matches their steps to the beat, promoting more symmetrical steps. Increasing the cadence or [...]
Article by Simone Dorsch The Stroke Foundation’s clinical guidelines for rehabilitation contain a guideline for improving walking after stroke that is a STRONG recommendation: Stroke survivors with difficulty walking should be given the opportunity to undertake tailored repetitive practice of walking (or components of walking) as much as possible. (French et al. 2016 [173]) [...]
Brian Beh is a 71-year-old stroke survivor who sustained a left lacunar stroke in April 2016. A retired management consultant and corporate communications executive, Brian is no stranger to confronting and managing corporate change in the business world. As a pioneer of change management in Australia, this background and experience assisted Brian during his [...]
Stand in a rehabilitation gym, listen to the communication between therapists and patients, and think about how to describe that communication. Does the communication mostly centre on what the therapist wants the patient to do for them? The following transcript comes from just one minute of a therapy session. Push, very good, excellent, now [...]
This is the third of a three-part blog series on semi-supervised practice. This blog describes how to use equipment to increase the safety and effectiveness of semi-supervised practice. Man with a stroke practising a step-up exercise Environment set-up for safety Wall on unaffected side Height adjustable table in front Chair [...]
This is the second of a three-part blog series on semi-supervised practice. This blog will describe how to adapt the physical environment of a gym to make setting up semi-supervised easier. The third blog in this series will describe how to use equipment to increase the safety and effectiveness of semi-supervised practice. To enable semi-supervised [...]
This is the first of a three-part blog series on semi-supervised practice. This blog will discuss the what is meant by the term semi-supervised practice, why this mode of practice might be used, and the education needed for staff, patients and relatives to implement semi-supervised practice in rehabilitation. The following three blogs will contain more [...]
Kate has been busy recently developing a number of online resource packages. These include resources for both stroke survivors and therapists! There are currently two research projects being conducted about these programs. TRAIN is being investigated by a survey pre and post program completion and TASK is being investigated in a feasibility study. We [...]
This is a study that I did in order to examine the impact of instructions on how hard people work - the results show a dramatic change in sit to stand performance with simple but deliberate changes in the instructions given Simone Goal-oriented instructions can increase the intensity and amount of practice completed by [...]