Background: Transitioning from a geriatric rehabilitation centre or hospital to home is challenging for persons post-stroke, as they must increase their ability to perform daily activities and self-manage their lives. Moreover, persons post-stroke exhibit more sedentary behaviour at home than during rehabilitation, which is detrimental to their health. The Occupational Therapy at Home E-Rehabilitation (OTHER) intervention aims to increase daily activities and self-management in persons post-stroke. OTHER involves in-person (online) coaching with information from activity monitoring. Here, we describe the design of a study investigating the (cost-)effectiveness of OTHER on the recovery of daily activities among older persons after stroke and evaluate its implementation process. Methods: A partially cluster randomised stepped-wedge trial is conducted in nine geriatric rehabilitation centres and two hospitals, aiming to include 171 post-stroke participants (aged ≥ 60 years) who are starting (inpatient) rehabilitation to return home. The intervention group receives the OTHER intervention by an occupational therapist, starting at the institute and continuing at home. This intervention consists of activity monitoring to increase insight into movement behaviour, as well as coaching by occupational therapists on improving daily activities at home. This supports persons post-stroke in performing daily activities and increasing self-management. The control group receives care as usual. The primary outcome is the performance score of the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure, which measures a person's perceived daily functioning at 6 months. A process evaluation will be conducted to assess the implementation process of the OTHER intervention during the research period. Discussion: This trial is studying the effect of activity monitoring combined with home-based occupational therapy coaching for persons post-stroke. With this study, we aim to provide insight into the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the OTHER intervention compared to care as usual for persons post-stroke, and describe the process of implementation, which includes home-based geriatric rehabilitation.
Pellegrom et al. (Tue,) studied this question.