Transcript – Video with Dr. Eng – Show me the Evidence (Spring 2013, Volume 1, Issue 4)

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Power to the Patients: Making Stroke Rehabilitation More Accessible

Many stroke survivors require physical rehabilitation as part of their recovery.

Dr. Janice Eng
University of British Columbia

Dr. Janice Eng: The evidence is very strong that more intensity and repetitions can improve your ability to use your arms and your hands early after stroke.

Unfortunately, there are limited resources for physical rehabilitation in our health care system.

Dr. Eng developed the Graded Repetitive Arm Supplementary Program (GRASP) to help stroke survivors do rehabilitation exercises at home.

Dr. Janice Eng: So GRASP represents a complementary model of health care delivery where the patient and family can take an active role in their rehabilitation and receive more arm rehabilitation in today's current health care system.

With the help of CIHR funding, Dr. Eng has been able to make GRASP available free online.

Dr. Janice Eng: The CIHR Knowledge Translation Supplement award has helped get my materials up on a website and free to clinicians. And I know now that there are several hundred sites across the world that are using our materials.

Dr. Janice Eng: We've had a number of people from around the world who have seen our programs on the web, have actually translated it themselves and then sent us a translation back. So we now have a number of translations of our programs.

Through GRASP, Dr. Eng is bringing her research findings to patients as quickly as possible.

Dr. Janice Eng: The literature cites a two-to-three decade lag in getting research from the time it's been shown to work into clinical practice. I think we can do much better than this. And I do believe with the knowledge translation efforts that CIHR is leading that we will be able to get treatments from the point of research, into clinical practice, to the people who truly need it much faster.