Therapies to Achieve Treatment Goals While Being Exposed to Hygiene and Distance Rules: Feasibility and Benefits of Digital Services During the COVID19 Pandemic (Anhand-COVID19)

In Germany, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic represents a crisis with massive effects on health and rehabilitation care. This crisis is not a short-term event but will also has longer-term effects on health care service/rehabilitation. Necessary adjustments due to hygiene and distance regulations include, for example, the reduction of group sizes and alternatives to conventional service provision (= digital services, McNeary et al., 2020). How such offers are perceived and accepted by patients and staff is crucial for the effect on the care. Systematic research into the pandemic from the patient and employee perspective, its consequences for procedures in rehabilitation clinics and for the implementation of the necessary therapies is required in a timely manner in order to better understand and mitigate the effects of the pandemic and to ensure the effectiveness of rehabilitation. This is the aim of this project with a focus on digital services and their subjective usefulness.

Furthermore, the integration of such offers can mean that a therapist is not present during the entire therapy, but that rehabilitants first learn the basics of a topic in self-study. This is based on the principle of the "Flipped Classroom". (Rehab) Patients as well as employees of the clinics are involved in the piloting of the survey instruments and the final choice of outcome criteria as well as the derivation of possible applications (guidelines, recommendations for rehabilitants).

In addition, the pandemic is negatively associated with equal participation of vulnerable groups (e.g. persons with physical or psychological handicaps). In the case of medical rehabilitation patients, particular occupational problems make equal participation and social cohesion more difficult: problems such as long-term limited productivity or the threat of exclusion from the labor market (pension for reduced earning capacity), negative employment forecasts and experiences of previously limited social participation are in turn further exacerbated by demographic change and the consequences of the COVID 19 pandemic. These restrictions are also reflected in the increased experience of loneliness. To date, however, there is a lack of a systematic understanding of these circular, dynamic processes and low-threshold, effective approaches to action, effective approaches to action.

The following questions will be empirically investigated:

1. How are digital services evaluated regarding feasibility, acceptance and subjective usefulness in light of the current situation?
2. Which characteristics of rehabilitants are related to the acceptance and subjective usefulness of digital offers?
3. For which patients of rehabilitation is there a need for support in the use of digital services to achieve rehabilitation goals?
4. Are there differences in perceived usefulness between services?
5. How do people in the welfare state and labor market with disabilities and impairments (rehabilitants) perceive the consequences of the Covid 19 pandemic and the transformation processes?
6. How effective are support measures with regard to communication for rehabilitants in supporting equal participation?
7. How should support for equal participation be designed in the long term: What What are the consequences for labor market and social policy?