Future Rehabilitation Professionals' Intentions to Use Self-Management Support: Helping Students to Help Patients

Abstract

Purpose: We evaluated whether education in self-management support (SMS) increases future clinicians' intentions to use a new way of delivering rehabilitation services. Methods: A convenience sample of 10 students took a 5-week theoretical course, followed by 6 weeks spent assessing patients, establishing treatment plans, and monitoring their performance by telephone. Focus groups were held before and after the educational modules, with deductive mapping of themes to the Theory of Planned Behaviour and inductive analysis of additional themes. Results: Five themes and 22 subcategories emerged from the deductive–inductive focus group content analysis. After participating in the educational modules, students reported gaining knowledge about SMS and highlighted the lack of similar preparation during their academic courses. Nonetheless, they were hesitant to adopt SMS. Conclusion: Future clinicians gained knowledge and skills after being exposed to SMS courses, but their intention to adopt SMS in their future daily practice remained low. We also noted a lack of formal training in SMS in the academic setting. The findings from this study support incorporating SMS training into the curriculum, but to increase students' intention to use SMS as part of patient care, training may need to be in more depth than it was in the modules we used.