Improving self‐perception and self‐efficacy in patients with spinal cord injury: the efficacy of DVD‐based instructions

Aims and objectives We assessed the effects of a spinal cord injury home rehabilitation DVD on patients with spinal cord injury. Background Multimedia have been used widely in health care in the digital age. The provision of rehabilitation instructions is a major responsibility of the rehabilitation staff. Design This study adopted a quasi‐experimental pretest–posttest control group design. Methods We collected data from a rehabilitation nursing ward at a medical centre between October 2011–April 2012. The participants were recruited before being discharged from the hospital. The experimental group (n = 28) received multimedia DVD instructions for three months, in addition to teaching sessions conducted by the researcher, whereas the control group (n = 31) received instructions without a DVD. Both groups completed the self‐perception and self‐efficacy scales used in this study before and after the intervention. Results The results indicated that, after the multimedia DVD intervention, the experimental group exhibited a considerably greater improvement in self‐perception than did the control group. Although we recorded increased scores for both self‐perception and self‐efficacy for both groups, no marked differences emerged between the control and the intervention groups by using a generalised estimating equation. Conclusion These results suggest that the home rehabilitation DVD is an effective instrument for improving self‐perception and self‐efficacy in patients with spinal cord injury. However, monitoring these patients over the long term is necessary. Relevance to clinical practice Our study results confirmed that the spinal cord injury home rehabilitation DVD is a practical health education tool. We plan to use the proposed DVD intervention with a larger number of hospitalised patients, and to continuously monitor their improvement.