Stroke is known to be one of the leading causes of long-term disability in the world. To tackle this devastating fact, Vigo Health along with researchers and rehabilitation doctors is continuously looking for ways to maintain patient dedication to recovery – a process that is demanding both physically and mentally.
Before starting therapy, it is important to find out each stroke survivor’s existing abilities in self-care, socialization, and other daily activities with the help of assessment tools like the Barthel Index that is widely used to determine the impairment level and to set recovery goals.
With the aim of keeping our patients engaged and motivated we have now introduced the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure. This scale allows Vigo users to set their most appropriate recovery goals and track the completion progress along the way. And most importantly, this process is entirely patient-centered!
What is the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM)?
Like other similar tools, COPM is intended for the assessment of functional abilities in everyday activities. It is a user-centered solution that allows a choice of activities in each of three domains – self-care, productivity, and leisure, allowing the patient to choose which is of the highest priority for him or her personally.
During therapy there can be several goals set and once a goal has been achieved, the user can then choose the next one. This gives a great sense of accomplishment and recovery progress even if the physical or cognitive skills are not yet fully recovered.
How does COPM work digitally?
In Vigo stroke therapy app COPM scale is introduced in a user-friendly format. First, the user chooses their desired activity goals, and evaluates his/her impairment in each selected activity, such as brushing teeth, eating, walking outside and many others. The program then adapts to these goals with specific functional therapy tasks or educational information and keeps the patient optimally challenged along the way.
What are the benefits of COPM in stroke recovery?
There is a variety of evidence that COPM is a reliable and sufficiently objective tool for assessing patients’ abilities. Most of the patients with other chronic diseases admitted their satisfaction with the scale as an evaluation mechanism, as well as with the results achieved. Although stroke can cause a variety of impairments, the COPM has proven its effectiveness in assessing most of them. This measurement tool is used throughout Vigo to monitor recovery dynamics and adjust the given set of exercises.
If you are curious how the digitized Canadian Occupational Performance Measure can improve your therapy outcomes, try Vigo stroke therapy app – a single platform for covering all your post-stroke therapy and educational content needs. Contact us at Vigo Health to find out more!