DISCUSSION

Persons with ABI face different problems. Their recovery after ABI is long-term, most often life-long. To a large extent, it depends on the neurological impairment at the time of the injury, but at the same time, the individual's functioning is influenced by his premorbid personality characteristics and abilities, the way of life before PMP and the influence of the narrower and wider environment in which he lives (Vešligaj Damiš, 2020).

In long-term rehabilitation, where the focus is precisely on goal-oriented rehabilitation, it is important to direct the users/injured to set new life goals, because their old life goals are most often dysfunctional and useless due to the injury, and they have to give new meaning in their life. This way, we enable them maximum participation in improving the quality of their daily life and the life of their families.

The needs of users with different problems require different interventions and combined treatments. It is a unique and comprehensive program that focuses on changing the brain in order to improve the functioning and behaviour of people with PMP during the lifelong phase of recovery.

In our research, we focused mainly on setting goals, assessing different life areas and verifying long-term goal-oriented rehabilitation. The goal of our research was not to find out which interventions have more and which have less influence on user’s positively perceived effects of rehabilitation. We mainly focused on the connection between a well-designed rehabilitation program for persons with ABI and the quality of life after ABI. Users achieve well-set goals (SMART) in multidisciplinary, continuous, long-term rehabilitation treatment over a long period of time.

Through our research, we have shown that long-term rehabilitation has a significant impact on various areas of the user's life, assessed with the Wheel of Life instrument. The connection between the duration of the treatment, i.e. the time of inclusion in long-term rehabilitation, and the quality of life assessed with the QOLIBRI measuring instrument, as well as between the length of the treatment and important life areas, which were assessed with the Wheel of Life measuring instrument, was also revealed.

Our results can be compared to the results of a research (Gray & Burnham, 2000), which showed that individuals with PMP who were included in a long-term rehabilitation program showed improvements in functional outcomes, which are also included in our Wheel of life instrument. The authors of the research pointed out that their results indicate that recovery is possible in persons with ABI even months and years after brain injury. This can also be linked to our results, as the average time since injury in our participants is 7.51 years, and we can still see progress in their scores on the Wheel of Life instrument. Wilson and colleagues (2017) came to similar conclusions, pointing out that the evidence points to the possibility of improvement or deterioration of functional outcomes up to two decades after ABI.

A correlation between effect of treatment and QOLIBRI scores was shown in our sample. The finding can be linked to a research in which authors found that the availability of emotional support is related to the quality of life after an acquired brain injury (Steadman-Pare et al., 2001). From this, we could conclude that the connection that was shown in our sample may, among other things, be due to the fact that we offer the users of Center Naprej daily emotional support.

Based on the correlation found between the results on the QOLIBRI questionnaire and the results on the Wheel of Life instrument in both assessment times, we could conclude that the Wheel of Life is a good instrument for assessing satisfaction with individual life areas of users. Despite this finding, further research is needed to verify the validity and reliability of the internal instrument Wheel of Life.