By Anna Shavers
Group therapies are commonly used in health care settings for various treatment plans, but what if when you went to see your physical or occupational therapist, you weren’t the only patient in the visit?
In Parkinson’s disease research, movement amplitude training programs have been found to have benefits in mobility and motor function. However, much of the research is assessing one-to-one intervention.
Therefore, a recent pilot study at the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases at UF Health may be the first look into the potential benefits of group physical therapy (PT) and occupational therapy (OT) in an outpatient setting.
Noelle Joyner, lead researcher and doctoral student of occupational therapy at the College of Public Health and Health Professions at the University of Florida, studied the use of a movement amplitude group PT and OT intervention in outcomes related to hand function, mobility, and symptom relief in patients living with Parkinson’s disease (PD).
With the guidance of Heather Simpson, OTD, MOT, OTR/L, Alison Kraus, PT, DPT, NCS and the PWR!(R) program’s creator, Becky Farley, Ph.D., M.S., PT, Joyner conducted a series of exams and questionnaires with five people living with mild to moderate PD. Participants attended 18 group PT and OT sessions with one-hour sessions, three times a week for six weeks.
Over the program, participants completed surveys about their perceived improvement in key categories: dressing, hygiene, driving, functional mobility, hobbies, mood and communication. Participants also answered questionnaires related to various quality of life indicators.
Across both surveys, participants saw a 30-40% improvement in their physical and occupational goals. Combined, these results along with other measured outcomes suggest that patients subjectively felt improvements in their ability to participate in activities that are meaningful to them as well as objectively seeing improvements in hand function and functional mobility.
“Findings from the study indicate that the skills taught and practiced during the group rehabilitation program were able to transfer to a variety of different domains in the participants’ daily lives. Group therapy may be beneficial in more domains than previously tested and could also be a feasible solution to growing demands for therapeutic intervention as the rate of disability in Parkinson’s disease grows,” said Joyner. “I hope that this study brings attention to group-based occupational and physical therapy and will become more widely utilized and studied.”