All participants gave written informed consent before data collection began. Competing interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest related to this work. Support: This study is funded by a partnership grant from the National Health and Medical Research Council

Australia (ID 541958). The authors would like to sincerely thank Dr Dennis Wollersheim for his contribution in assisting with activity monitor data extraction. “
“The dose-response relationship between intensity of therapy and increased recovery of motor function after stroke is well supported by evidence FG-4592 solubility dmso (Kwakkel et al 2004, Galvin et al 2008, Cooke et al 2010), and is reflected in clinical guidelines for stroke rehabilitation (National Stroke Foundation, 2010), although the effect size of this benefit varies between individual studies (Kwakkel et al 2004, Galvin et al

2008). Despite this evidence, many observational studies have shown that people with stroke spend very little time engaged in physical activity during the course of a day in rehabilitation, with therapy sessions being the most active part of the day (Ada et al 1999, Bernhardt et al 2004). Therefore, physiotherapists working in stroke rehabilitation are constantly challenged to maximise the amount of active therapy stroke survivors are engaged in each day. In order to change clinical behavior it is important to Selleck PLX3397 be able to assess the existing behaviour or practice accurately. Only two studies have specifically examined the accuracy of therapists in reporting therapy time (Wittwer et al 2000, Bagley et al 2009), both of which used video-recordings of therapy sessions as the criterion standard. In an observational study embedded in a clinical trial of stroke rehabilitation, Bagley et al (2009) found that physiotherapists systematically overestimated the duration of therapy sessions by more than 20 per cent. In an earlier study, Wittwer et al (2000) found moderate to high correlations (Spearman Tolmetin rank order correlation

coefficient 0.49 to 0.83) between therapist estimates and video-recorded time for subcategories of physical activity (upper limb, bed mobility, sitting, sit to stand, standing, and early gait activities), but the presence of systematic over- or under-estimations was not examined. Both of these studies investigated the accuracy of individual therapy sessions. The accuracy of therapists in estimating therapy duration for group circuit class therapy sessions has not been examined. The Circuit Class Therapy for Increasing Rehabilitation Intensity of Therapy after Stroke (CIRCIT) trial is a multicentre randomised trial currently investigating alternative models of physiotherapy service provision (Hillier et al 2011).