Physical Therapists Unable to Encourage Exercise
Activities that promote physical activity (PA) in health care are important for increasing PA levels. Physiotherapists are in a good position to promote PA, but there are no studies that have investigated PA promotion by physiotherapists across Australia, so this is a survey.
Australian Physiotherapists.
An online survey of practice was conducted to determine knowledge of Australian Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour (PASB) guidelines and factors associated with increased frequency of promotion.
Participants were asked to state the PASB guidelines, a four-component scoring system was used to measure knowledge, and multivariate logistic regression analysis was conducted to assess factors associated with frequency of promotion.
Results.
A survey of 257 Australian physiotherapists was completed and only 10% were able to accurately state the PASB guidelines, with 54% reporting promoting PA to 10 or more patients per month.
Men were about three times more likely than women to promote PA to more than 10 patients per month, and those who lacked counseling skills and felt that promoting PA would not change patient behavior were much less likely to promote PA.
Freene, N., Cools, S. & Bissett, B. Are we missing opportunities? Physiotherapy and physical activity promotion: a cross-sectional survey. BMC Sports Sci Med Rehabil 9, 19 (2017). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13102-017-0084-y
Summary
This study found that physiotherapists in Australia are not doing enough to promote physical activity in their positions.The study was published in November 2017 so hopefully things are different now.
Why? This study was published in November 2017, so I hope the situation has changed. I know many of you may be wondering why, but I want you to put your hand on your heart and ask yourself again, are we promoting physical activity appropriately to those who are involved in clinical practice? But I want you to put your hand on your heart and ask yourself again, are you appropriately promoting physical activity to the people you work with?
In this study, the reasons for not promoting physical activity included a lack of appropriate knowledge, but also the fact that physical activity takes time and does not produce immediate results.
I can somewhat sympathize with this. In clinical practice, time-consuming instruction may be frowned upon, and patients may want a quick and easy way to improve. I believe everyone knows that health can be enjoyed through exercise, but many people do not understand it, so many people keep looking for ways to improve effortlessly.
Although there is an ideal model for physical activity, it is important to do it or not to do it, and intensity and time are not that important. It is true that resistance is necessary for the development of muscle strength, but is it possible to achieve muscle strength just by sitting around without proper physical activity? That's not the case.
Whenever I suggest physical activity, I always ask, how much time? How do you do it? But most people who worry about such things don't do it. Many of the people who were able to improve their exercise habits were able to start voluntarily by reducing the amount of time they spent sitting on their own. I think we have to continue to make suggestions based on these factors.
