Patient motivation is often cited as being important in rehabilitation. The purpose of this study was to determine whether there is consistency between rehabilitation staff's ratings of patients' motivation and also what criteria they use to make these rating decisions. It was found that staff showed poor agreement in their motivation ratings, despite conceptualizing motivated behaviours in similar ways. It is concluded that motivation is an unhelpful concept and that rehabilitation decisions would be better facilitated by describing specific behaviours which staff associate with motivation, e.g. mobility, self-care, independence.
