Development of a database of rehabilitation therapies for the psychological consequences of acquired brain impairment

This paper describes developmental work underpinning a database resource containing published reports of therapies targeting the psychological consequences of acquired brain impairment (ABI). The resource, entitled the Psychological Database for Brain Impairment Treatment Efficacy (PsycBITETM), was primarily developed to aid clinicians to identify and implement evidence-based interventions for individuals with ABI. PsycBITETM is modelled on the Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) and is available, free of charge, on the internet (http://www.psycbite.com). Reports meeting five selection criteria are eligible for inclusion on PsycBITETM : (1) the report is a full-length publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, (2) regarding populations with brain impairment of acquired aetiology, (3) who are older than 5 years of age, (4) receiving an intervention that targets a psychological consequence of ABI, and (5) the report contains empirical data regarding treatment efficacy. Like PEDro, a distinctive feature of PsycBITETM is that reports are rated for methodological rigour and ranked in order of their methodological strength. The current paper also reports the results of two inter-rater reliability studies. The identification process, determining whether reports meet the selection criteria, was found to have very high inter-rater reliability (k = 0.92), and agreement on the indexing terms was also very high (97.6%). To our knowledge, PsycBITETM is the first resource of its kind and it is anticipated that it will provide a vital and unique role in the promotion of evidence-based clinical practice, which has the potential to improve the lives of people with ABI.