Return to work in people with acquired brain injury: association with observed ability to use everyday technology

Abstract

Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore how the observed ability to use everyday technology (ET), intrapersonal capacities and environmental characteristics related to ET use contributes to the likelihood of return to work in people with ABI. The aim was also to explore whether these variables added to the likelihood of return to work to earlier defined significant variables in the group: age, perceived ADL ability and perceived ability in ET use.

Method: A cross-sectional study. The Management of Everyday Technology Assessment (META), the short version of the Everyday Technology Use Questionnaire (S-ETUQ) and a revised version of the ADL taxonomy were used to evaluate 74 people with ABI. Individual ability measures from all assessments were generated by Rasch analyses and used for additional statistical analysis.

Results: The univariate analyses showed that the observed ability to use ET, as well as intrapersonal capacities and environmental characteristics related to ET use were all significantly associated with returning to work. In the multivariate analyses, none of these associations remained.

Conclusion: The explanatory precision of return to work in people with ABI increased minimally by adding the observed ability to use ET and the variables related to ET use when age, perceived ability in ET use and ADL had been taken in account.

Keywords:

• Assessment
• assistive technology
• brain injury
• occupational therapy
• rehabilitation
• technology
• work

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the people with ABI who participated in the study. The authors are grateful to PhD OT Ann-Charlotte Kassberg, who collected data and administered parts of it and to the registered OTs Kristina Johansson and Anita Levén, who collected data, all from the County Council of Norrbotten.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflict of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Funding information

The study was funded by the Promobilia Foundation, Luleå University of Technology, the Strategic Research Program in Care Sciences at Umeå University and at Karolinska Institutet.