Qualitative Study
Therapist’s Perceptions of Social Media and Video Game Technologies in Upper Limb Rehabilitation
Tatla, S. K., Shirzad, N., Lohse, K. R., Virji-Babul, N., Hoens, A. M., Holsti, L., Li, L. C., Miller, K. J., Lam, M. Y. & Van der Loos, H. M.
JMIR Serious Games, 2015 3 (1):e2 DOI: 10.2196/games.3401
PMID: 25759148
Full content*: games.jmir.org/2015/1/e2
Objective: The objective of (this) study was to explore therapists’ perceptions of how young people and adults with hemiplegia use gaming and social media technologies in daily life and in rehabilitation, and to identify barriers to using these technologies in rehabilitation.
Method: A purposive sample of occupational and physical therapists was gathered for two focus group sessions. Participants were guided through a semi-structured interview with open questions. The content was audio recorded and transcribed. Coding allowed themes to emerge; participants were involved in affirming the findings.
Findings: The authors identified three themes relating to social media and gaming technologies: the presence or uptake in the lives of rehabilitation clients; barriers to use in therapy, and possible benefits. Clients varied in their use of social media and gaming technologies, and therapists also made limited use of these. Barriers to use included age appropriateness, the therapists’ concern with client’s privacy, questionable transferability of skills, lack of accessibility, and “reconciling (the) therapist role within the gaming context”. Benefits included the social-emotional, rehabilitation and usability features of social media and videogaming.
Examined through the lens of Diffusion of Innovation Theory, barriers to uptake included “increased complexity, limited relative advantage, perceived lack of compatibility with values of some clients and therapists’ reconciling compatibility with their values”. Facilitators of uptake included “motivation, trialability, social connection as key benefit, and perceived compatibility with values of some clients”.
*This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Serious Games, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://games.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.