A nation-wide survey exploring the views of current and future use of Functional Electrical Stimulation in Spinal Cord Injury

Purpose: Functional electrical stimulation (FES) can beis effective in assisting physical and psychosocial difficulties experienced by people with spinal cord injury. However, the Pperceived benefits and barriers of the current and future use of FES within the wider spinal cord injury community is currently unknown. The main objective of this research was to explore the spinal cord injury community’s views of the use of FES to decrease disability in rehabilitation programmes.Materials and methods: An online and paper survey questionnaire was distributed to people with spinal cord injury, health care professionals and researchers working in the field of FES and spinal cord injury settings in the United Kingdom.Results: A total of 299 participants completed the survey (152 people with spinal cord injury, 141 health care professionals and 6 researchers). Common views between groups identified were: (1) functional electrical stimulationFES can bewas beneficial in improving physical and psychosocial aspects and that (2) adequate support and training for FES application was provided to users. Barriers to FES use included a lack of staff time and training, financial cost and availability of the equipment. Sixty three percent of non-users felt they would use functional electrical stimulationFES in the future if they had the opportunity.Conclusions: Users’ views were important in identifying that FES application can bethe beneficialits and for people with spinal cord injury but also has some resourceful barriers of functional electrical stimulation application. In order to increase use, future research should focus on reductingon the cost of the FES clinical service by identifying responders to FES and also address implementation of awareness and training programmes within spinal units and community rehabilitation settings