Connecting Again: Pilot Follow-up Program for North American Version of Tbiconnect

Research Objectives: To examine feasibility of a pilot follow-up North America TBIconneCT (FUN-ConnecT).
To examine clinician impressions on delivering FUN-ConnecT.
To examine participant perspectives regarding FUN-ConnecT.

Design: Individuals with acquired brain injuries (ABI) participated in six follow-up sessions, co-facilitated by two graduate speech-language pathology students. Participants selected a individual goals that built upon their TBIconneCT experience, however, they were not constrained to a previous goal. Participants contributed a written, open-ended reflections, which were analyzed qualitatively through reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2021).

Setting: FUN-ConnecT was conducted via telehealth on Zoom. A goal setting interview was conducted in the initial session and the remaining five sessions focused on intervention.

Participants: Twelve individuals with chronic ABI participated in this observational study. Twenty-four graduate students enrolled in a course-based clinical experience also served as participants. Two clinicians were paired with a single participant. Clinicians differed from the graduate clinicians who facilitated the pilot North American Version of TBIconneCT the prior semester.

Interventions: Since each participant self selected goals, individual approaches varied slightly. Most participants identified a project (e.g., presentation at the state brain injury conference) and a project-based intervention approach was used (Behn et al., 2019; Behn et al., 2023; Hoepner et al., 2022). Some continued their conversational intervention initiated in TBIconneCT (Hall et al., in press; Rietdijk et al., 2019, Rietdijk et al., 2020). All interventions employed motivational interviewing to elicit self-determined goals and projects (Hoepner, 2023; Hoepner et al., 2021). Findings from the pilot North American TBIconneCT program and Australian studies suggested that ongoing, follow-up sessions were desired by participants (Hall et al., in press; Rietdijk et al., 2019; Rietdijk et al., 2020).

Main Outcome Measures: Reflections by participants with ABI and students were analyzed qualitatively (but separately), using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006).

Results: Participants with ABI overwhelmingly reported that their student clinicians were outstanding supports and expressed satisfaction with being able to address a personal goal with the support of their clinicians, noting that without the students supports, they would not have been able to organize the project on their own to bring it to fruition. Students reflected that they valued the experience of learning about the lived experience of ABI from the participants with ABI. The telehealth context allowed them to see a glimpse of their home environments.

Conclusions: The individualized follow-up intervention was feasible to deliver and outcomes perceived as satisfactory.

Author(s) Disclosures: The author has no financial or non-financial disclosures related to this project.