The significance of social rules in group training sessions.

Purpose: To identify what types of social rules are involved in group interventions led by physiotherapists (PTs), and how these rules influence individual recovery. Methods: Eight patients; six women and two men, which had recently undergone elective hip or knee replacement surgery, were recruited as informants from an intervention group that investigated effect of task specific exercise. The data comprise observational notes from group training sessions and one-on-one semi-structured interviews with the eight patients. Observational notes contributed to the development of the research questions. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed, and a theoretically-oriented analytical approach guided by performance theory was conducted to identify the rules. Results: Several implicit rules for behavior when attending this group intervention were identified. The compulsory style enhances recovery in an explicit manner. Conclusion: When giving advice and home exercise PTs must acknowledge that the roles patients are subtly exposed to during the actual clinical encounter are probably quite different from the roles the patients can merge into outside the therapy context. This might shed some light on the notion of patient adherence/concordance. The significance of social rules in group training sessions.