Determination of Factors Influencing Physical Therapy Treatment Compliance

Abstract

Background: Compliance to long term therapy is the extent to which a person's behavior - taking medication, following a diet or executing lifestyle changes, corresponds with agreed recommendations from a health care provider. Aim: To determine the factors influencing physical therapy treatment compliance and relation of age and gender on compliance. Study Design: Observational study. Methodology: Study conducted for 6 months in public sector hospitals of twin cities of Pakistan. Non-probability convenient sampling technique was used. Data was collected by interviewing the patients, using self-structured questionnaire. 141 patients attending physical therapy treatment in outpatient department for more than three days and willing to participate in the study, were included in the study. Patient who visited OPD for first time, pediatric patient and indoor patients were excluded. Data was analyzed by SPSS software, version 25 as qualitative variables were expressed as frequencies and percentages. Results: Most of patient could not adhere to physical therapy because of unavailability of time (60.28%), lengthy follow up (46.10%), boredom with exercise (23.4%), unavailability of respective gender (23.4%), long distance between home and hospital (20.6%), Physical contact with therapist during session (15.6%) and fear of modality (7.8%). Most patients within age group of 29-42 and 43-56 responded that frequent visits to hospital to attend multiple sessions of physical therapy were the reason they left physical therapy sessions and had unavailability of time to attend physical therapy sessions. Conclusion: We concluded that frequent visits to hospital to attend multiple sessions of physical therapy and unavailability of time are two main factors that led to poor compliance to physical therapy treatment. Keywords: Barriers, Compliance and Physical Therapy Treatment