Empowering people with ABI to acquire better insight into brain injury: an application of educational principles

In this thesis, Christine Durham investigates the life experiences of 36 people with acquired brain injury (ABI) and further, the perspectives of five family carers and five professionals. Using an innovative method entitled Keys to the ABI Cage, study participants used cards with concepts drawn from previous literature around challenges and positive experiences to explore lives in a non-threatening way. The approach also supported participants to identify and use ‘keys’ to escape the ABI cage and re-engage with everyday life. Based on learning principles, Keys to the ABI Cage, supported participants to enter into a narrative about their lives by choosing concepts and ideas that applied to their own life experiences. By offering additional concepts on cards that were not part of those experiences, the study also prompted participants to think about how other possibilities might be used to improve their lives. The narratives produced from interviews were analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) and this systematic analysis established the struggles and the positives in people’s lives in a way not yet exemplified in the ABI literature. The study approach was also designed to accomplish this in a manner that did no harm to the participants. <br>This study establishes that ABI is not simply about damaged brains and is as much about re-engaging with everyday life. It demonstrates the positive factors people identify which give them hope and establishes through its own method an approach that complements the medicalised approach to mending bodies with one that seeks to mend broken lives and identities. It offers a potentially new practice-based approach for people with ABI and others whose lives and identities have been fractures and those struggling to regain a life of choice and of quality.<br>