Health Professionals’ Experience of Barriers in Empowering People with Spinal Cord Injury: a Qualitative Inquiry

Empowering an individual with spinal cord injury as far as possible is an experience with various social and cultural aspects. This study investigated health professionals' experiences of barriers in empowering individuals with spinal cord injuries. This was a qualitative inquiry with a conventional content analysis approach. A number of 11 healthcare professionals who were members of Iran Spinal Cord Injuries Research National Network or had been working in a related research center for at least three years participated in the study. A purposive sampling method was applied until reaching data saturation. The data were collected by semi-structured interviews. The collected data were managed with MAXQDA software version 10. Three main themes as barriers in empowering people with spinal cord injury emerged: 1) Lack of patient-and-family-centered education, 2) Failure in providing sufficient healthcare services and 3) Inappropriate setting for using rehabilitation services. These finding can help policymakers to provide better social facilities and more support services for people with spinal cord injuries and their families. Further research is needed to investigate barriers to empowerment from the perspective of individuals with SCI and their families.