Development of a database of rehabilitation therapies for the psychological consequences of acquired brain impairment

This paper describes developmental work underpinning a database resource containing published reports of therapies targeting the psychological consequences of acquired brain impairment (ABI). The resource, entitled the Psychological Database for Brain Impairment Treatment Efficacy (PsycBITE™), was primarily developed to aid clinicians to identify and implement evidence-based interventions for individuals with ABI. PsycBITE™ is modelled on the Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) and is available, free of charge, on the internet (http://www.psycbite.com). Reports meeting five selection criteria are eligible for inclusion on PsycBITE™: (1) the report is a full-length publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, (2) regarding populations with brain impairment of acquired aetiology, (3) who are older than 5 years of age, (4) receiving an intervention that targets a psychological consequence of ABI, and (5) the report contains empirical data regarding treatment efficacy. Like PEDro, a distinctive feature of PsycBITE™ is that reports are rated for methodological rigour and ranked in order of their methodological strength. The current paper also reports the results of two inter-rater reliability studies. The identification process, determining whether reports meet the selection criteria, was found to have very high inter-rater reliability (k = 0.92), and agreement on the indexing terms was also very high (97.6%). To our knowledge, PsycBITE™ is the first resource of its kind and it is anticipated that it will provide a vital and unique role in the promotion of evidence-based clinical practice, which has the potential to improve the lives of people with ABI.