TEleRehabilitation Nepal (TERN) to Improve Quality of Life of People With Spinal Cord Injury and Acquired Brain Injury. A Proof-of-concept Study

The methods to be used in each of the three work packages of this study are:

Work Package 1: Identifying baseline and context

Individuals discharged from SIRC between January 2018 and December 2019 will be identified and recruited to the study. Initially, a cross sectional study will capture their experiences and baseline community outcomes using both standardised quantitative outcome measures and qualitative data from semi-structured interviews. Recruitment and data collection for this part of the study will be conducted by partners in Nepal. Analysis and management of this data will be joint between Nepal and Leeds teams.

Work Package 2: Assessing utility of telerehabilitation to address needs

Informed by previous work package, user and stakeholder workshops will be used to explore the role of multidisciplinary video teleconferencing, telemedicine follow-up clinics, remote management using mobile phone camera monitoring and other methods identified to reach consensus on interventions to address the most pressing clinical challenges. These workshops will be facilitated by all the researchers and will involve service users, family members, clinicians, hospital managers, community health providers, NGO representatives and national policy makers.