Patients Satisfaction with an in-Home Telerehabilitation Exercise Program and Physiotherapists’ Satisfaction toward Technology for an Acute Stroke Population: A Pilot Study

The purpose of this study was to investigate the satisfaction of patients and physiotherapists toward technology used during in-home teletreatment following discharge from an acute care hospital after a stroke. The teletreatment that was delivered to the patients consisted of 45-minute sessions of exercises inspired from Tai Chi movements, twice a week, over a period of 8 weeks. The health care services satisfaction questionnaire was completed by the patients at the end of the intervention. The subjective appreciation of the technical quality of the physiotherapist using the technology during the telerehabilitation treatment was noted at the end of each treatment session. The analyses for this pilot study have thus been completed on a total of 6 patients and over 96 sessions by a physiotherapist. Satisfaction towards health care services provided was high for both patients (86%) and physiotherapists (90%). While patient satisfaction is very important in maintaining treatment compliance, the satisfaction of health care professionals must be high in order for new treatments to become mainstream in clinics. Our results show that in-home telerehabilitation seems to be a promising alternative to traditional face-to-face treatments.