Training Physical Therapists in Person‐Centered Practice for People With Osteoarthritis: A Qualitative Case Study

Abstract

Although physical therapists found training overwhelming initially as they realized the limitations of their current knowledge and clinical practice, they felt more confident and able to provide person-centered care to people with knee osteoarthritis by the end of training. Training in structured person-centered methodology that provides opportunity for skills practice with patients using a restructured consultation framework can change physical therapists' beliefs about their roles when managing patients with osteoarthritis and positively impact their clinical practice.

Implementation of person‐centred practice principles and behaviour change techniques after a 2‐day training workshop: A nested case study involving physiotherapists

“…In between, ongoing and deliberate practice of skills and techniques is recommended and self‐reflection on performance during clinical consultations is encouraged. Unpublished data from HealthChange Australia demonstrate that health professionals who complete their training programme report increase in confidence after completing a third and final training day (Core Training Part 2), and our qualitative data also supports this (Lawford et al, ).…”

“…This may reflect a lack of confidence in applying those principles and techniques, or may indicate that physiotherapists found them more difficult to learn and/or adopt into their practice. In fact, physiotherapists reported a lack of confidence after the first 2 training days in our related qualitative study (Lawford et al, ). Our findings might also simply reflect the fact that physiotherapists were inexperienced in using the techniques, and so had a poor gauge of their skill level relative to an “expert”.…”

Association Between Therapeutic Alliance and Outcomes Following Telephone-Delivered Exercise by a Physical Therapist for People With Knee Osteoarthritis: Secondary Analyses From a Randomized Controlled Trial (Preprint)

“…However, in accordance with recommendations from the American Statistical Association [53], we did not interpret our results on the basis of statistical significance alone, instead considering the clinical significance of the findings. Before commencement of the trial, all trial physical therapists underwent training in person-centered care and behavior change techniques [30]. Our findings may not be generalizable to other physical therapists in the community who have not undergone such training.…”

Barriers and Facilitators of a New Model of Stratified Exercise Therapy in Knee Osteoarthritis: A Qualitative Study

“…Many patients reported that their physiotherapist 'really listened', and that this was in contrast to previous physiotherapy treatments. This ndings emphasize that, although a personalized approach is already generally acknowledged as being crucial for an effective physiotherapy treatment 13 , this needs to be addressed more extensively in physiotherapy education. 14 Next to the facilitators, we also identi ed some generic and subgroup-speci c barriers.…”