Article type
Abstract
Background: Patients’ preferences for treatment are an important and integral component of evidence-based practice. However, it is not clear to which extent these preferences influence treatment choices and rehabilitation.
Objectives: To explore and describe how patients with musculoskeletal disorders perceived that their preferences for physiotherapy treatment influenced their rehabilitation during a physiotherapy treatment period, how the preferences were accommodated in the clinical decision making, and how the rehabilitation affected their preferences.
Method: Qualitative interview data from patients seeking physiotherapy for their musculoskeletal disorder were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Eighteen patients were interviewed after a physiotherapy treatment period in a primary care rehabilitation facility.
Results: The analysis revealed that the participants’ treatment preferences had, for the most part, influenced both the choice of treatment and the rehabilitation process. While preferences were expressed to various extents, and largely accommodated in the decision process, two-way communication and a good dialogue was perceived as more important than their preferences to achieve good rehabilitation. Treatment decisions, were to a large extent, made jointly by the physiotherapist and the patient. The participants expressed various ways of contributing to the decisions and feeling that their views mattered. Two-way communication and discussing treatment options in a good dialogue comprised the basis for sharing the decisions and for a collaborative rehabilitation. Some preferred to leave treatment decisions to their physiotherapist, perceiving that they were in good hands and that their physiotherapist was competent and professional. The participants described how the rehabilitation had influenced their perceptions of different treatment methods.
Conclusions: The findings emphasise the importance of eliciting patient preferences, two-way communication, discussing treatment options and listening closely, in order to stimulate active engagement in physiotherapy.
Objectives: To explore and describe how patients with musculoskeletal disorders perceived that their preferences for physiotherapy treatment influenced their rehabilitation during a physiotherapy treatment period, how the preferences were accommodated in the clinical decision making, and how the rehabilitation affected their preferences.
Method: Qualitative interview data from patients seeking physiotherapy for their musculoskeletal disorder were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Eighteen patients were interviewed after a physiotherapy treatment period in a primary care rehabilitation facility.
Results: The analysis revealed that the participants’ treatment preferences had, for the most part, influenced both the choice of treatment and the rehabilitation process. While preferences were expressed to various extents, and largely accommodated in the decision process, two-way communication and a good dialogue was perceived as more important than their preferences to achieve good rehabilitation. Treatment decisions, were to a large extent, made jointly by the physiotherapist and the patient. The participants expressed various ways of contributing to the decisions and feeling that their views mattered. Two-way communication and discussing treatment options in a good dialogue comprised the basis for sharing the decisions and for a collaborative rehabilitation. Some preferred to leave treatment decisions to their physiotherapist, perceiving that they were in good hands and that their physiotherapist was competent and professional. The participants described how the rehabilitation had influenced their perceptions of different treatment methods.
Conclusions: The findings emphasise the importance of eliciting patient preferences, two-way communication, discussing treatment options and listening closely, in order to stimulate active engagement in physiotherapy.