PHYSIOSAIL - SAILING THERAPY AS AN EXAMPLE FOR A NEW AREA OF PHYSIOTHERAPY PRESENTING AN INTERFACE TO SPORTS SCIENCES

¹University Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany, ²Physio Groll, Münster, Germany

Background: Stroke and multiples sclerosis are common purposes of disability in industrial nations. The patients have, like other patients with neurological disease, less leisure activities than able-bodied peers, which ends in a lack of participation. Physiotherapy can improve the functions and activities, but nevertheless the people remain patients. Sports (inlcuding games and movement) can be an opportunity to support them in building up an identity beyond the patient role. But the way into sports is difficult for a lot of patients, which is why they need professional thearpeutic instruction.

Purpose: Sailing therapy unites physiotherapy, especially Bobath-based therapy, with concepts of sports didactics in order to encourage a new identity of the disabled person leading to better participation.

Methods: A sailing therapy concept was created using an approach of innovative sports didactis. In a pilot study, six persons with neurological disease took part in the sailing therapy, instructed by an advanced physiotherapist with extensive experience in sailing itself and sailing with disabled people. The individual intervention took place during one week, from Monday to Friday, two hours a day. Wednesday was a day off for rest. The intervention included all aspects of boat rigging, transfer in and out of the boat, sailing practice and theory. All participants sailed by themselves and were supervised by radio. The main aim was to not to make transfer and sailing as easy as possible, in order to have good functional training. However, it was designed to be so easy that all participants were able to handle all tasks and situations even at the first attempt. For sailing, the boat types Hansa 2.3 and 303 were used, which guarantee a maximum of safety and can be adapted to the individual abilities. About ten days after the last sailing day, guided interviews were conducted, transcribed and analyzed with qualitative content analysis by Kuckartz.

Results: In the interviews, the participants reported better self-confidence and changes in self-consciousness as well as awareness of others. Almost all participants were amazed by themselves, because they had not expected to being able to sail on their own. They described improved contact to friends and felt less disabled than before. In four of six interviews the probands made clear the importance of professional physiotherapeutic instruction and assisstance. Only the two probands with the most moderate disability disagreed.

Conclusion(s): The results hypothesize that sailing therapy could be useful to encourage participation for the participants of this study. This confirms the results of other studies that show the impact of sports to reorganise the identity and particpation of disabled people. But due to the design of this study (qualitative design, very small sample), these results cannot be generalized.

Implications: This study shows the potential of a new therapeutic approach combining physiotherapy and sports didactis, that needs to be developed further.

Funding acknowledgements: The study is part of the the author´s PhD thesis and was funded by herself.

Topic: Disability & rehabilitation

Ethics approval: No ethic committee, who could approve this study, exists in Germany. All ethic principles of good scientific work were protected.

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