Rehabilitation practice that addresses and supports autonomy, social connection, risk taking, adaptation and hope among stroke survivors may help individuals regain personally valued activities post-stroke.

Effective occupational therapy for improving handwriting must include adequate handwriting practice.

Occupational therapists are increasingly urged to carry out evidenced-based practice; however, little is known regarding their present practice and perceptions of evidence-based practice. To explore this phenomenon, a qualitative study was completed using a grounded theory approach. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with eight occupational therapists who worked in diverse practice settings. Participants were asked to reflect on their own views of evidence-based practice and their use of evidence in therapy. Data were analyzed inductively using constant comparison analysis. Participants' perceptions of evidence-based practice were described in three broad categories. To these occupational therapists, evidence-based practice is: (a) a process of looking for understanding; (b) associated with research, and; (c) a potential threat to the occupational therapist. These findings produce a basis from which recommendations are made to increase the use of evidence-based practice by occupational therapists.

BackgroundLeadership by point-of-care and senior managers is increasingly recognized as critical to the acceptance and use of research evidence in practice. The purpose of this systematic review was to identify the leadership behaviours of managers that are associated with research use by clinical staff in nursing and allied health professionals.MethodsA mixed methods systematic review was performed. Eight electronic bibliographic databases were searched. Studies examining the association between leadership behaviours and nurses and allied health professionals’ use of research were eligible for inclusion. Studies were excluded if leadership could not be clearly attributed to someone in a management position. Two reviewers independently screened abstracts, reviewed full-text articles, extracted data and performed quality assessments. Narrative synthesis was conducted.ResultsThe search yielded 7019 unique titles and abstracts after duplicates were removed. Three hundred five full-text articles were reviewed, and 31 studies reported in 34 articles were included. Methods used were qualitative (n = 19), cross-sectional survey (n = 9), and mixed methods (n = 3). All studies included nurses, and six also included allied health professionals. Twelve leadership behaviours were extracted from the data for point-of-care managers and ten for senior managers. Findings indicated that managers performed a diverse range of leadership behaviours that encompassed change-oriented, relation-oriented and task-oriented behaviours. The most commonly described behavior was support for the change, which involved demonstrating conceptual and operational commitment to research-based practices.ConclusionsThis systematic review adds to the growing body of evidence that indicates that manager-staff dyads are influential in translating research evidence into action. Findings also reveal that leadership for research use involves change and task-oriented behaviours that influence the environmental milieu and the organisational infrastructure that supports clinical care. While findings explain how managers enact leadership for research use, we now require robust methodological studies to determine which behaviours are effective in enabling research use with nurses and allied health professionals for high-quality evidence-based care.Trial registrationPROSPERO CRD42014007660Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s13012-018-0817-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Risk of long-term continuous use of benzodiazepines seems to increase with age. This association was found to be independent of gender, health status, anxiety, cognitive status, benzodiazepine type, and physician characteristics.