Management and dissemination of professional expertise: Physiotherapists’ perceptions of the supervision of dedicated aides working with children with cerebral palsy

Abstract

A qualitative study was undertaken to explore pediatric physiotherapists' perceptions and experiences of supervising dedicated aides responsible for the daily care of preschool children with cerebral palsy. Data were collected using individual semi-structured interviews.A theme based content analysis yielded three major themes. Supervision and therapy were provided simultaneously, giving supervision a secondary priority. The physiotherapists transitioned their professional language into a common form of language to make the aides understand. The importance of letting aides attain first-person experiences of professional skills were highlighted. Implications of the findings for supervision in pediatric physiotherapy and for future research are addressed.

Physiotherapy supervision of home trainers in interprofessional reablement teams

“…Studies describe PTs' (serving as practice educators) supervision of PT students (Fogstad & Christiansen, 2011;Lähteenmäki, 2005;Stainsby & Bannigan, 2012), specialist PTs' supervision of community PTs (Normann et al, 2014), and paediatric PTs' supervision of the caregivers of disabled children (Sørvoll, Obstfelder, Normann, & Øberg, 2016). These studies emphasize that physiotherapy supervision is a process where knowledge is transferred through interaction and reflection and that action, context and culture are essential for learning (Korpi, Peltokallio, & Piirainen, 2014).…”