"I felt part of a team": A qualitative study of how interprofessional communication shapes person-centered care in spinal cord injury rehabilitation.

Abstract

Spinal cord injury (SCI) rehabilitation is highly interprofessional, and person-centered care is widely advocated in this context. While interprofessional communication is recognized as central, too little is known about how it is experienced by patients. This study aimed to explore how patients experience interprofessional communication during SCI rehabilitation and how these experiences shape person-centered care from a patient perspective. A qualitative study was conducted using semi-structured interviews with 29 individuals after discharge from SCI rehabilitation. Interviews focused on patients' experiences of interprofessional communication across rehabilitation situations. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Patients experienced interprofessional communication as contributing to person-centered care in two main ways. First, it shaped relational experiences by fostering feelings of inclusion in a team, being taken seriously, and a shared commitment to one's best interest. Second, interprofessional communication shaped experiences of rehabilitation-related processes by supporting patients' focus, rehabilitation progress, and confidence in self-management. Across these experiences, patients described concrete interprofessional communication approaches that made care feel person-centered, including harmonious team presence, respectful information exchange, collaborative expertise exchange, visible and reliable coordination, aligned goals, and consistent patient education. Interprofessional communication plays a central role in how person-centered care is experienced in SCI rehabilitation. Grounded in patients' perspectives, these findings highlight specific communication approaches through which interprofessional communication contributes to relational and rehabilitation-related processes of person-centered care. Patients attend not only to how professionals communicate with them, but also to how professionals communicate with one another. Visible, respectful, and coordinated interprofessional communication can reduce patients' cognitive and emotional burden and support rehabilitation engagement and self-management. Healthcare institutions can strengthen interprofessional communication by supporting team-based communication practices, such as interprofessional rounds that include patients, shared goal alignment, and opportunities for interprofessional reflection and learning.