Physical activity counselling in Ireland: a survey of doctors’ knowledge, attitudes and self-reported practice

Abstract

ObjectivePhysical activity (PA) counselling has been shown to raise awareness of the importance of PA and to increase the rate of PA engagement among patients. While much attention has been paid to examining the knowledge, attitudes and practice of general practitioners in relation to PA counselling, there is less literature examining such issues in hospital-based doctors in Ireland and further afield. This study aimed to explore doctors’ PA counselling practices and to analyse how this related to their level of PA knowledge, training and attitudes.MethodsAn invitation to participate in an online survey was sent to 4692 members of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland who were listed as having an address in Ireland. Descriptive and explorative analyses of the data were performed using IBM SPSS V.22.0.ResultsA total of 595 valid responses were included (response rate 12.7%; 42.7% male, 42.6±12.1 years). The majority reported enquiring about PA levels (88.0%) and providing PA counselling (86.4%) in at least some of their patients. Doctors who saw it as their role and those who felt more effective/confident in providing PA counselling were significantly more likely to do so. A perceived lack of patient interest in PA and patient preference for pharmaceutical intervention were significant barriers to undertaking PA counselling.ConclusionThis study demonstrates the need for further education and training in PA counselling in Ireland with a particular focus on improving the attitudes and self-efficacy of doctors in this area at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Healthcare Professionals Promotion of Physical Activity with Older Adults: A Survey of Knowledge and Routine Practice

“…In this survey most respondents were fully qualified with regular patient contact for more than 6 years, which suggests that continuing education/professional development on physical activity promotion will be crucial to maximise their impact on and support for sustained behaviour change with their patients. This finding is consistent with other studies that have highlighted the need for postgraduate training for healthcare professionals to address health behaviour change [ 23 , 24 ], but also the need to integrate physical activity training and its relationship with health at an undergraduate level. Several reports indicate that this issue is now receiving greater attention in undergraduate curricula [ 25 , 26 ].…”

“…The recently introduced Making Every Contact Count (MECC) strategy places the responsibility for providing brief (and opportunistic) interventions on all healthcare professionals who may have patient contact in Ireland and Northern Ireland. By integrating MECC at the initial/undergraduate level it is planned that brief interventions will become central to many consultations [ 23 ]. In this survey most respondents were fully qualified with regular patient contact for more than 6 years, which suggests that continuing education/professional development on physical activity promotion will be crucial to maximise their impact on and support for sustained behaviour change with their patients.…”

Is Promotion of Mobility in Older Patients Hospitalized for Medical Illness a Physician’s Job?—An Interview Study with Physicians in Denmark

“…Although considered an important part of treatment, nurses, nursing assistants and physicians did not consider mobility as part of their core tasks [ 19 ]. Additionally, as opposed to physicians educated in geriatric specialties, who focused on mobility, physicians educated in medical specialties primarily focused on diagnosis, treatment and discharge of the patient, indicating that their medical education influences their view on what is considered part of their core tasks [ 19 , 60 ]. Furthermore, an Irish study investigating physician attitudes towards mobility counselling found an association between considering activity counselling your role and providing this counselling [ 60 ], and revealed a lack of physician training in mobility.…”

Physical Activity Promotion: A Systematic Review of The Perceptions of Healthcare Professionals

“…Appendix B provides legends for all the tables in the paper. Twelve (12) of the 34 studies in this review, explored the perceptions of HCPs practising in Europe [53,[63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73], 10 were conducted in Australia and New Zealand [31,51,69,[74][75][76][77][78][79][80], five each from the UK [52,[81][82][83][84] and USA [85][86][87][88][89], two from Africa [75,90], and one from India [91]. The study designs were varied with 20 of the 34 included studies employing a cross sectional design [31,[65][66][67][68][70][71][72][73][74]76,79,…”