Physiotherapy
-
Randomized Controlled Trial
Reference chart of inspiratory muscle strength: a new tool to monitor the effect of pre-operative training.
To develop a reference chart to monitor inspiratory muscle strength during pre-operative inspiratory muscle training for patients at high risk of developing postoperative pulmonary complications awaiting coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. ⋯ The chart is a novel tool for monitoring the progress of inspiratory muscle training for physiotherapy practice. Wider use of this chart is recommended.
-
To improve understanding about the barriers and facilitators to physical activity for people with Alzheimer's disease and their spouse carers, and to consider the development of activity interventions that would be acceptable, sustainable and feasible for both groups. ⋯ An individually tailored approach for couples, which values the role of the carer and accounts for the progressive and changing nature of dementia, should be a guiding principle for intervention design.
-
To investigate the perceptions of doctors, nurses and physiotherapists of emergency department physiotherapy for acute patients, and explore the scope of its contribution in an otherwise nontraditional allied health setting in Australia. ⋯ Participants described the benefits of having physiotherapists located in the emergency department, and the physiotherapists were eager to advance their roles and responsibilities, but were, at times, restricted by a complicated organisational landscape influencing professional autonomy and capacity for professional advocacy. Ongoing evidence supporting the breadth of physiotherapy practice in the emergency department is needed to further advocate the usefulness of the profession in this acute setting.
-
To compare different reliability coefficients (exact agreement, and variations of the kappa (generalised, Cohen's and Prevalence Adjusted and Biased Adjusted (PABAK))) for four physiotherapists conducting visual assessments of scapulae. ⋯ Calculating coefficients for therapist pairs alone may result in inconsistent findings. In contrast, the generalised kappa provided a coefficient close to the mean of the paired kappa coefficients. These findings support an assertion that generalised kappa may lead to a better representation of reliability between three or more raters and that reliability studies only calculating agreement between two raters should be interpreted with caution. However, generalised kappa may mask more extreme cases of agreement (or disagreement) that paired comparisons may reveal.
-
With the global shift in health care from secondary to primary care, employment opportunities for newly qualified physiotherapists are likely to be in the primary care setting. However, to date, undergraduate physiotherapy clinical education has been centred around secondary care, focusing on acute services in large teaching hospitals. For contemporary physiotherapists to become effective first-contact primary care providers, they need to be exposed to the primary care environment during their undergraduate education. ⋯ This study revealed that there is support for the provision of physiotherapy clinical education in the primary care setting. Through careful consideration with clear planning and collaboration with all stakeholders, it may be possible to convert the main barriers identified into facilitators to ensure that there will be an adequately prepared physiotherapy work force in the future.