“It does not always need to be staff choosing the agenda”: The experiences of people with traumatic brain injury when communicating with rehabilitation staff

Purpose:
Communicative interactions between people with cognitive-communication disorders following traumatic brain injury (TBI) and rehabilitation staff can be challenging. While staff perspectives on the communication issues in the rehabilitation context are commonly reported, the perspectives of people with TBI remain unclear. The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of people with TBI when communicating with rehabilitation staff.
Method:
A qualitative interview study with individual semistructured interviews with nine individuals with moderate-to-severe TBI. Interviews were video-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed through an inductive reflexive thematic analysis.
Results:
Three themes with six subthemes were generated from the analysis: (a) Communicating with staff is challenging (struggling with information processing, lack of opportunities to express oneself). (b) Relationships with staff are established through communication (inappropriate communication style by staff, the power balance is skewed). (c) People with TBI want individualized communication (staff should tailor their approach, being acknowledged as a unique individual).
Conclusions:
Participants shared experiences of communicative interactions with staff as challenging and in some cases leading to feelings of frustration and a lack of participation in rehabilitation decisions. Furthermore, participants expressed a need for staff to adapt their communication to facilitate effective information processing and provide opportunities to express thoughts, ideas, and feelings.