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The effectiveness of social communication partner training for adults with severe chronic TBI and their families using a measure of perceived communication ability.

BACKGROUND
Training for communication partners of people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) is efficacious when using blinded independent ratings of casual conversations measured in the clinic. However, the question remains as to whether participants with TBI and their significant other perceive changes to everyday social communication as a result of training.


OBJECTIVE
To determine whether treatment focused on improving the conversational skills of everyday communication partners of people with severe TBI using a program called TBI Express resulted in improvements in perceived communicative ability as measured by the La Trobe Communication Questionnaire (LCQ).


METHODS
Non randomized controlled trial comparing treatment of people with TBI together with communication partners (JOINT) with treatment of people with TBI without partner involvement (TBI SOLO) and a waitlist control group (CTRL) with follow-up at 6 months post-treatment. Forty-four outpatients from brain injury units in Sydney with severe chronic acquired brain injuries were recruited. A further 27 eligible outpatients refused to participate or could not be contacted. A total of 41 people completed treatment and 38 completed 6 month follow up assessment. The measure of perceived communication ability is the report of the participant with TBI and their partner on the LCQ.


RESULTS
Communication partner training (JOINT) improved conversational performance relative to training the person with TBI alone and a waitlist control group on the LCQ. The TBI SOLO group improved in terms of report on the LCQ relative to the CONTROL group. Results were maintained at six months post-training.


CONCLUSION
Training communication partners of people with chronic severe TBI using TBI Express led to perceived improvements in everyday communication ability by both the person with TBI and their family member.