Orozco Tatiana, Feldman Debbie E, Mazer Barbara, Chilingaryan Gevorg, Hunt Matthew, Williams-Jones Bryn, Laliberté Maude
School of Rehabilitation, Faculty of Medicine.
School of Rehabilitation, Faculty of Medicine; Public Health Research Institute; Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Rehabilitation of Greater Montreal.
Physiother Can. 2017;69(1):49-56. doi: 10.3138/ptc.2015-72.
The aim of this study was to describe the current patterns of service delivery of Canadian physiotherapy (PT) professionals working in adult musculoskeletal (MSK) outpatient practice. A total of 846 Canadian PT professionals working with an adult MSK outpatient clientele participated in an online survey about how they would treat a patient with low back pain (LBP). After reading an online clinical vignette about a fictional patient with varying insurance status, participants answered questions about how they would treat the patient (e.g., wait time, frequency and duration of treatment, time allotted for initial evaluation and treatment), about their actual practice (e.g., number of patients seen per day), and about their work setting. The vignette patients with LBP would typically be seen within 2 weeks, especially in private practice, and most would receive care 2-3 times per week for 1-3 months. Initial evaluations and subsequent treatments would take 31-60 minutes. Two-thirds of participants reported treating 6-15 patients a day in their current practice setting. Differences were found between provinces and territories (with the longest wait time in Quebec), practice settings (with a longer wait time in the public sector), and insurance status (patients covered by workers' compensation are seen more frequently). This study adds to our knowledge of the accessibility of outpatient MSK PT services for patients with LBP in Canada, and it points to potential areas for improvement.
本研究的目的是描述在成人肌肉骨骼（MSK）门诊工作的加拿大物理治疗（PT）专业人员当前的服务提供模式。共有846名与成人MSK门诊患者打交道的加拿大PT专业人员参与了一项关于他们如何治疗腰痛（LBP）患者的在线调查。在阅读了一篇关于一名虚构患者的不同保险状况的在线临床案例后，参与者回答了关于他们将如何治疗该患者的问题（例如，等待时间、治疗频率和持续时间、初次评估和治疗的时间分配）、关于他们的实际执业情况（例如，每天看诊的患者数量）以及关于他们的工作环境的问题。患有LBP的案例患者通常会在两周内就诊，尤其是在私人诊所，并且大多数患者每周会接受2至3次治疗，持续1至3个月。初次评估和后续治疗将耗时31至60分钟。三分之二的参与者报告称，在他们当前的执业环境中，每天治疗6至15名患者。研究发现各省和地区之间存在差异（魁北克的等待时间最长）、执业环境之间存在差异（公共部门的等待时间更长）以及保险状况之间存在差异（工伤赔偿覆盖的患者就诊更频繁）。这项研究增加了我们对加拿大LBP患者获得门诊MSK PT服务的可及性的了解，并指出了潜在的改进领域。
