Objectives: This study aims to explore whether motivational interviewing can improve the performance of activities of daily living of first-stroke patients and its effectiveness on the enhancement of the patients’ motivation for rehabilitation.
Methods: A quasi-experimental study design was utilized in this study. Cluster assignment was used to recruit patients (n=65) diagnosed with stroke in the rehabilitation ward of a regional hospital in Central Taiwan as the research subjects. Before the intervention, all the subjects received routine care. On top of routine care, the experimental group (n = 33) received weekly sessions of MI for six weeks, while the control group (n=32) received individual company from the research nurse once a week for six weeks. Activities of daily living (ADLs), Instrument activities of daily living (IADLs) and rehabilitation motivation were used for the measurement of the effectiveness of the MI intervention. SPSS 22.0 for Windows was used for statistical analysis of the research data.
Results: Significant changes were found in the scores of ADLs, IADLs and the rehabilitation motivation in the experimental and control groups in both the post-tests taken immediately after and three months after the MI intervention. It was showed from the generalized estimating equation that the scores of rehabilitation motivation of the experimental group in the post-tests six weeks after and three months after the intervention was 3.10 and 2.54 points more than those of the control group, reaching significant difference statistically (p< 0.05).
Conclusion: The study confirmed the effectiveness of motivational interviewing on the improvement in the rehabilitation motivation for stroke patients. Therefore, the MI skills can be applied in clinical practice in the future.
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