Providing Care to Patients with AIDS: How Prepared are Nigerian Physiotherapists

Abstract

Adequate knowledge and core affective traits are important for effective management of patients with contagious diseases or conditions like AIDS. This study aimed to assess Nigerian physiotherapists’ cognitive and affective traits in providing care to patients living with AIDS (PWA). Methods: Physiotherapists across Nigeria (N=132) were surveyed using a 43-item questionnaire that elicited information on their demographic characteristics, knowledge of transmission, universal precaution and pathophysiology on AIDS, their feeling of preparedness, comfort, ethical disposition to care for PWA and their willingness to assess and provide intervention to PWA in different clinical scenarios.Results: The physiotherapists’ knowledge of AIDS pathophysiology was unsatisfactory, half of them did not have satisfactory knowledge of precaution, one-third recorded unsatisfactory score on feeling of comfort and ethical disposition, and one-fifth did not feel adequately prepared to care for PWA. Knowledge of transmission, pathophysiology and ethical disposition were respectively influenced by physiotherapists’ religious affiliation, rank and gender. Marital status, previous experience in caring for PWA, and gender were influential to willingness to evaluate and treat in two and three clinical scenarios respectively. Physiotherapists were less willing to provide whirlpool wound care procedures compared to other procedural interventions. Conclusions: The study identified improvement need in the cognitive and affective domain of learning among these practitioners in the care of PWA.

Exercise has a positive impact on bone mineral density in seropositive human immunodeficiency virus: do health professionals know?

“…Ideally, it is expected that physiotherapists should demonstrate significantly greater knowledge than the other professional groups since they incorporate exercise therapy in their practice by designing, prescribing and administering this form of therapy in both disease and health. This observed insignificant difference may not be astounding, because Oyeyemi et al [35] found that Nigerian physiotherapists were neither familiar nor willing to manage persons living with HIV/AIDS, and showed unsatisfactory knowledge of universal precautions and AIDS pathophysiology, and low ethical temperament when it comes to providing care for persons living with HIV/AIDS [26]. Also in Canada, Worthington et al [36] reported that most physiotherapists hardly manage persons living with HIV, were uncomfortable with the idea and HIV training was not part of the rehabilitation degree curricula.…”

“…Maduagwu et al [25] had hypothesized that lack of knowledge on the effect of exercise on HIV-infected persons among health professionals might be the reason for the dearth of literature (especially in the developing nations) on the impact of exercise on this population living with HIV. Additionally, Oyeyemi et al [26] posited that adequate knowledge, skills, readiness and willingness to provide care are prerequisites for effective management of persons infected with diseases such as HIV. We envisage that knowing and understanding the favorable impact of exercise on bone mass in HIV cohort among health professionals may stimulate interest to conduct empirical studies on this field.…”