Abstract
Background
Phone based Physiotherapy is a topical area of investigation. Salisbury, (2013) states it may be as effective as usual care. It is also suggested that satisfaction is similar, but more specific attitudes have not been investigated. This study aims to retrospectively investigate the attitudes of PD vs usual care patients and to identify any differences in the attitudes of spine pain vs peripheral pain patients.
Methods and Results
Questionnaires including 6 attitude questions (3 negatively, 3 positively worded) scored between 0–10 were completed by 197 physiotherapy patients discharged between 6 and 12 months previously. n=99 had received usual care, n=19 only PD care and n=79 both PD and usual care. N=61 had been treated for back or neck pain and n=136 had peripheral pain.
Overall patients who had received some PD care were more likely to strongly agree (score 8–10) with the positive statements and strongly disagree (score 0–2) with the negative ones than patients who had not had some PD care.
Spine patients who had never had PD were more likely to strongly agree with the negative statements than non-spines, but this was only the case with 1-in-3 negative statements in spine patients who had received PD.
Compared to spine pain patients who had never had PD care, spine patients who had received PD were far more likely to strongly disagree with negative statements about PD than non-spine patients. Multiple other interesting trends exist.
Conclusion
Spine pain patients' attitudes to PD care may differ from non-spine pain patients.
