ArticlePhysiotherapy research international : the journal for researchers and clinicians in physical therapy2022
Knowledge about foot-specific foot falls risk factors and exercise among physiotherapists in the UK and Portugal: A cross-sectional survey.
Article in Physiotherapy research international : the journal for researchers and clinicians in physical therapy, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Knowledge about foot-specific foot falls risk factors and exercise among physiotherapists in the UK and Portugal: A cross-sectional survey.Physiotherapy research international : the journal for researchers and clinicians in physical therapy · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
background and purposeFoot-related falls risk factors and specific foot and ankle exercise interventions are within the scope of Physiotherapy, yet little is known about United Kingdom (UK) and Portugal-based (PT) physiotherapists' self-perceived knowledge, confidence and practice of such interventions, or perceptions of patients' falls prevention knowledge. The purpose of this study was to assess levels of self-reported knowledge, confidence, and practices surrounding foot-specific falls risk and exercise for fall prevention in physiotherapists working in the UK and in Portugal. It also aimed to explore physiotherapists' views about their participants' falls prevention knowledge.
methodsA self-report online survey was developed, and pilot tested in both nations. Registered Physiotherapists were invited to participate through their professional associations, social media and snowballing. Mann-Whitney tests were used to compare mean ranks of ordinal variables between nations and Chi-square test to assess the independency between pairs of variables. Spearman's correlation coefficient (rs) was used to measure the association between pairs of variables (p < 0.05).
results682 physiotherapists participated in the survey [UK n = 229 (mean (SD) age = 43(10) years, 86.9% female]; PT n = 453 (mean (SD) age = 33(9) years, 78.3% female]. Among physiotherapists with a caseload of ≥70% older adults, more PT-based physiotherapists held postgraduate qualifications (p = 0.01). Most physiotherapists correctly identified generic and foot-specific risk factors (≥70% of participants for each item). More UK-based physiotherapists reported always prescribing ankle and foot exercises (42.6% vs. 33%, p =< 0.001) and displayed higher levels of self-reported confidence surrounding exercise-based interventions. DISCUSSION: Our sample of UK and Portugal-based physiotherapists are aware of the contribution of foot-specific risk factors and exercise to falls prevention, with the former group being more confident in exercise-based interventions. Both groups of physiotherapists perceived that their older patients had little knowledge about these topics, with UK older adults having slightly better knowledge on generic falls risk factors at first contact. Future studies and strategies for knowledge translation and education in foot health and foot function screening and management for physiotherapists, within a falls prevention scope, may be informed by this study.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.