70 Chapter 3 to arrange visits. In addition, therapy moments should follow the rhythm of the rehabilitant during the day. This is the first study into the perspectives of rehabilitants and informal caregivers regarding CRE. The strength of this study is the variety of informal caregivers and rehabilitants included. All participants had recent experience with rehabilitation (and different diagnoses and ages), but were in different phases of their rehabilitation process, resulting in a good mix of participants. The use of focus groups stimulated the exchange of ideas, which also resulted in new ideas. Participants were asked for topics they thought were important for a CRE, even topics that were not mentioned by the researchers. In this way it was ensured that all relevant topics were discussed and the internal validity of the study was increased. In this study, 15 rehabilitants and 6 informal caregivers from the Netherlands participated. In order to increase the external validity of the study, participants were included until data saturation was achieved. Although all rehabilitants rehabilitated in Dutch rehabilitation institutions, it is likely that results can be generalized to other countries. A limitation of our study is that, due to COVID-19, we were unable to include more informal caregivers in focus groups and had to switch to telephone interviews. This limited the discussion between participants, but these informal caregivers were able to express their own ideas regarding CRE without interruption. The results of these telephone interviews were in line with the results of the focus groups. Therefore, we expect that this adjustment had no effect on the results of this study and that the outcomes are broadly supported by informal caregivers and rehabilitants. The second limitation of our study, is that most of the informal caregivers were caregiver of a rehabilitant with a brain injury. The perspectives of the informal caregiver from a rehabilitant after a trauma were in line with the perspectives of the informal caregivers from rehabilitants with brain injury. Also, the perspectives of the rehabilitants themselves with and without brain injury were comparable. Therefore, we expect that this distribution had no effect on the results of this study.
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