Nigerian hospitals continue to experience evolving roles of physiotherapists in the critical care arena, and there are hurdles to scale to develop high quality of critical care services. The Physiotherapist as a member of the critical care multidisciplinary team manages patients in the critical care unit of hospitals by using multisystem assessment to formulate individualized treatment plan. Such treatments often contributes to decreased Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and hospital stay, and improved physical function of patients. There is therefore, need for Nigerian physiotherapists to consolidate on gains already achieved, by identifying any gaps in their ICU service, closing these gaps, and further improving quality of service. This study examined the challenges faced by physiotherapists in delivering critical care service in Nigerian hospitals. Methods: Structured questionnaires were piloted, modified and administered to the physiotherapists during the annual conference of the Nigerian Society of Physiotherapists, 2016. The questionnaire contained questions regarding staffing, availability of equipment, referral and the like, in Likert scale form. Each challenge item was scored. Scores above the mean score were considered as a challenge to physiotherapy services in the ICU Results: Of the 150 physiotherapists who received the questionnaires, 90 completed the questionnaire (response rate of 60%). Respondents identified poor knowledge of critical care (3 .16±0.98), poor staffing (3.6±1.21), rotation of physiotherapists (3.19±1.08), lack of equipment (3.57±1.19), lack of team work (3.11±1.25), and poor referral (3.41±1.20) as challenges to physiotherapy service in the ICU Conclusion: This study identified many challenges to efficient physiotherapy ICU service in Nigeria. We suggest that hospitals should explore measures and strategies to overcome these challenges, so as to further improve patients' outcome in ICU care.

The unpurified enzyme gave specific activity of 51.36 μ/mg and thereafter it was subjected to two phases of purification process of salt precipitation and gel filtration. The precipitating agent was ammonium sulphate while Sephadex-G100 served as purification matrix. The purification fold achieved after precipitation and filtration was 3.3 and with corresponding specific activities of 34.22 μ/mg and 116.31 μ/mg. The substrate used for the assay was o-dianisidine. Within 40-80°C of temperature, the kinetics of the peroxidase inactivation was evaluated. The results from assays showed that cucumber peroxidase conformed to the hypothesis of  Michealis-Menten Theory. From the Lineweaver-Burk plot, Michaelis Constant (Km) and maximum velocity (Vmax) were evaluated and  obtained 5.02mg/ml and 11.57μmol/min respectively. The heat induced inactivation gave biphasic curves, where initial rise in temperature was rapidly succeeded with much slower decrease. A first-order kinetic behaviour was observed for cucumber peroxidase heat inactivation. The k values of between 3.49×10-2 to 8.38×10-2 min-1 was obtained while the Z value was found to be 22.3°C. Decrease in k values with rise in temperature suggests that cucumber peroxidase was rapidly inactivated at elevated temperature. The slope of Arrhenius plot gave the activation energy of 127.99KJMol-1K-1. Also evaluated were thermodynamic constants (ΔH, G Δ, ΔS) for inactivation of peroxidase at variable temperatures. Cucumber peroxidase activity was observed to be pH sensitive and stable within pH range of 5.6-8. Further decrease or increase from this range resulted to decrease in peroxidase stability.