Maclean and Pounds paper focuses on identifying the extent of which patient’s motivation influences the overall outcome of the therapy
Maclean and Pounds paper focuses on identifying the extent of which patient’s motivation influences the overall outcome of the therapy, as it is widely believed to improve the performance of patients and the variation of professionals understanding of motivation. It also details the possible implications that research findings, regarding the role of motivation and rehabilitation success, could have on professional practice by highlighting which social factors should be manipulated to improve the patient’s performance in rehabilitation activities. The paper concentrates on three main arguments that attempt to explain what determines the level of patient motivation: a predisposed personality trait, social factors (such as how welcoming the rehabilitation staff are ) or a combination of the two.
Overall, the paper does suggest a few strategies professionals could use to improve patient motivation to increase rehabilitation success, for example, setting clear goals for the patients to work towards and ensuring that the patients feel that their views are welcome, but most of these suggestions lack empirical and concrete evidence to support their effectiveness and relevance. This is likely to be because a number of the sources Maclean and Pound included in their article only hypothesised what factors affect motivation and are untested, this, therefore, questions the reliability of the article.
