Our objectives are a) to investigate the problematic issues suggested by the stroke rehabilitation literature: the influence of age on decisions about rehabilitation, practitioner/patient communication difficulties, lack of continuity in rehabilitation measures, minimal support to families, and health professionals' insufficient awareness of the influence of lifestyles on methods of coping with illness; b) to address the major limitation of that literature: the lack of appropriate attention paid to process in stroke rehabilitation. We will continue collecting data to test our specific research hypothesis: patterns of intervention in the rehabilitation of stroke patients will be determined by 3 factors: 1) age of the patient, 2) physician attitudes toward rehabilitation that affect decision-making, and 3) family members' perceived role in the patient's rehabilitation and the nature and extent of their supportive efforts. We plan to follow the rehabilitation process for 125 Mt. Zion Hospital stroke patients and their significant family members for one year. To date, 48 patients are in the study. We plan to select the remaining 77 patients, conduct initial interviews, 3-month follow-up and 12-month follow-up interviews. Qualitative analysis of first and three-month follow-up interviews will continue: description of the range, content and relationships among sociocultural factors that influence the rehabilitation process. Quantitative analysis of first and three-month follow-up interviews will begin: common descriptive statistics will be employed to explore a) means and medians for measures of central tendency, b) standard deviations for measures of dispersion, and c) relationships found among variables.
| Becker, G; Kaufman, S R (1995) Managing an uncertain illness trajectory in old age: patients' and physicians' views of stroke. Med Anthropol Q 9:165-87 |
| Becker, G (1993) Continuity after a stroke: implications of life-course disruption in old age. Gerontologist 33:148-58 |
| Kaufman, S R; Becker, G (1991) Content and boundaries of medicine in long-term care: physicians talk about stroke. Gerontologist 31:238-45 |
| Becker, G; Kaufman, S (1988) Old age, rehabilitation, and research: a review of the issues. Gerontologist 28:459-68 |
| Kaufman, S; Becker, G (1986) Stroke: health care on the periphery. Soc Sci Med 22:983-9 |
