A survey of clinicians working in brain injury rehabilitation: are social cognition impairments on the radar?

Objectives: To examine the social cognition assessment practices of clinicians working with children and adults with traumatic brain injury. Main Measures: Online survey addressing frequency of social cognition impairments, how these are assessed and obstacles to same, and treatment practices. Participants: A total of 443 clinicians worldwide working in inpatient and outpatient settings. Results: While 84% of clinicians reported that more than half of their clients with severe traumatic brain injury had social cognition impairments, 78% of these reported that they infrequently or never assessed these domains using a formal assessment tool. Lack of reliable tests was most frequently (33% of respondents) cited as the greatest barrier to undertaking social cognition assessment. Conclusions and Implications: Improvements are needed in the development and norming of instruments capable of detecting social cognition impairments in the traumatic brain injury population. Additional training and education is needed in the use of social cognition assessment tools.