Table 6 Theme 4: Potential role of FES in balance interventions

4a) “They would complement each other” (SCI/D2)

Q37: “… but I’m starting to get excited when I listen to all of this because I can think of a lot of ways that we could start to use [FES] in balance training.” (RT3)

Q38: “… there’s so much evidence for functional electrical stimulation around, you know, any neurological recovery, right? So like spinal cord, stroke. And the evidence is really promising, right? And we’re seeing it come out in a lot of best practice guidelines… So to me it’s almost kind of like a no-brainer, you know?” (HA1)

Q39: “I mean I can see some exciting pairings of what therapists typically do for balance training and the role of FES… So, I mean we’re trying to use tasks to elicit some of those muscles, but then to pair those tasks with FES would, I could see some really neat um neat things happening.” (L1)

4b) Exploring how to incorporate FES into balance training

Q40: “Like while they were either in standing or in sitting and again having them do some of those uh reaching tasks outside of there…I think just what everybody else is saying is we do…a little bit of exploring …” (HA1)

Q41: “…  we typically would use [FES] as an adjunct to whether it’s gait training and activation and then we would challenge balance separately, so this is really exciting. I think one of the things I would use is the Bioness and then, again it’s more within the um gait training components, but sometimes there were moments when there would be a reactive balance, where you would lose control and then you’d have the Bioness on …” (PT2)

Q42: “The other point that…was interesting was about that postural control because even like with my OT role, I would use the Xcite a lot just to kind of activate the trunk.” (HA1)