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Introduction
Over the last few years, military personnel who were employed in Iraq, as well as Afghanistan, have experienced traumatic brain injury (TBI) and posttraumatic stress disorder. As stipulated by Caperhart and Bass (2012), IED (the improvised explosive device) is one of the commonly utilized weapons in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Various studies have indicated that the effects of the device have contributed significantly to traumatic brain injury among combat veterans deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the aspects of rehabilitating patients suffering from traumatic brain injury is to teach them how to learn a sequence of actions. An individual with traumatic brain or posttraumatic stress disorder may need to learn and re-learn some actions that can play a critical role in optimizing their safety. Examples of actions that an individual suffering from traumatic brain injury may need to re-learn include clasping the arms rest, rotating the footplates as well as actions revolving around putting brakes on the wheelchair.
Main Text
Some of the teaching techniques employed in educating patients suffering from traumatic brain injury include modeling and molding. The modeling approach demands a TBI patient to imitate movement shown by the therapist/physician. On the other hand, molding entails a situation whereby a therapist moves the limb of a patient suffering from the traumatic brain while the patient remains passive. Therapists are increasingly utilizing these two education techniques to coach functional motor sequence in patients suffering from traumatic brain injury (Caperhart & Bass, 2012).
Zlotowitz et al. (2010) carried out a study to compare the efficiency of molding as well as modeling instruction approach for education of a series of activities to individuals suffering from traumatic brain injury. The research design employed in this study was a randomized crossover design. Those who took part in this study included 16 subjects suffering from traumatic brain injury. The subjects were given instructions to recollect two diverse sequences of 7-hand movements after 5 minutes. Besides modeling, the molding approach was utilized to teach the subjects the sequences of action. The findings of the study indicated that the molding approach was less effective in teaching patients suffering from trauma when compared to the modeling approach. Zlotowitz et al. concluded that the modeling approach can produce desirable outcomes when employed to teach patients with traumatic brain injury and as such, they recommended that modeling technique be used to educate TBI patients if optimal results are to be attained.
Page et al. (2006) carried out another study to investigate the effectiveness of trial and error instruction approach and errorless instruction method to provide education to victims suffering from traumatic brain injury. The errorless instructional approach entails a scenario whereby a patient is prevented from committing errors in the course of the learning session while trial and error techniques entail a situation whereby the TBI patient is allowed to make errors in the course of the learning session. Page et al. hypothesized that errorless technique could have a greater capacity to enhance the memory of TBI patients when employed as opposed to trial and error instructional approach. Nevertheless, the findings of this study also indicated that there were no considerable differences between the two approaches concerning patient outcomes.
Conclusion
It is apparent from the discussion that modeling is the most effective technique employed by therapists to educate patients suffering from traumatic brain injury compared to the molding instructional approach. Other instructional approaches revealed in this paper such as trial and error as well as errorless instructional have no significant differences when compared with one another. This paper recommends that future research be undertaken to compare the effectiveness of the four instructional approaches discussed in this paper in educating patients suffering from traumatic brain injury.
References
Caperhart, B., & Bass, D. (2012). Review: Managing posttraumatic stress disorder in combat veterans with comorbid traumatic brain injury. Journal of Rehabilitation Research & Development, 49(6), 789-812. Web.
Page, M., Wilson, B., Shiel, A., Carter, G. & Norris, D. (2006). What is the locus of the errorless-Learning advantage? Neuropsychologia, 44, 90–100.
Zlotowitz, S., Fallow, K., Illingworth, V., Liu, C., Greenwood, R., & Papps, B. (2010). Teaching action sequences after brain injury: A comparison of modeling and molding techniques. Clinical Rehabilitation, 24(7), 632-638.
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