Self-reported confidence of final year Australian physiotherapy entry-to-practice students and recent graduates in their capability to deliver care via videoconferencing

Abstract

Objective

To investigate the self-reported confidence of final year Australian physiotherapy students and recent graduates in their capability to deliver care via videoconferencing.

Design

A national cross-sectional survey

Participants

Australian physiotherapy students enrolled in their final year of an entry-to-practice physiotherapy program and recent graduates (graduating year 2020 or 2021) from an entry-to-practice physiotherapy program.

Methods

Participants were recruited via email invitation from their university, direct invitation during a lecture/tutorial and advertisements on social media. Participants rated their confidence (using 4-point Likert scales) in performing 60 individual core capabilities across seven domains from an international core capability framework developed for physiotherapists delivering quality care via videoconferencing. Data were dichotomised with ‘moderately confident’ and ‘extremely confident’ deemed as ‘confident’ and ‘slightly confident’ and ‘not confident’ deemed as ‘not confident’.

Results

343 participants from 20 (out of 25) Australian universities offering entry-to-practice physiotherapy programs completed the survey. The most common program participants were enrolled in/completed was a Bachelor of Physiotherapy (61%, n = 209). Overall, most (75–100%) participants were confident in the domain ‘delivery of telehealth’, many (51–74%) were confident in domains of ‘patient privacy and confidentiality’, ‘patient safety’, ‘assessment and diagnosis’, ‘care planning and management’, and some (25–50%) were confident in ‘technology skills’ and ‘compliance’ issues.

Conclusion

Findings from this study highlight areas where final year entry-to-practice physiotherapy students and recent graduates may need additional support and training to deliver quality care via videoconferencing. These findings can inform the content of telehealth physiotherapy curricula.

Keywords:

• Physiotherapy
• physical therapy
• telerehabilitation
• telehealth
• videoconferencing

Ethical approval

Ethics approval was obtained from the Human Research Ethics Committee at the University of Melbourne (Ethics ID: 22615).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Centre of Research Excellence [#1079078]. KLB is supported by an NHMRC Investigator Fellowship [#1174431) and RSH by a NHMRC Senior Research Fellowship [#1154217].