Does Continuing Education Improve Pt Physical Activity Counseling Among Patients With Disability? A Cross-sectional Study

Physical therapists (PT) receive limited education on implementing health promotion and behavior change counseling in clinical settings for people with disabilities, which is pivotal when providing physical activity (PA) promotion. Continuing education (CE) has the potential to support increases in knowledge and skills to support PA promotion for people with disabilities, however, there has been no investigation on the impact of relevant continuing education courses on the rate PT promote PA for people with disabilities. PURPOSE: To investigate the effect of attending CE courses in health promotion and behavior change on PA promotion frequency of PT in the US. METHODS: An online survey assessed if PA promotion frequency for patients with disability varied by CE history. Frequency was a self-reported measure (how often on a weekly basis: 1 = rarely, 5 = always). A sample of licensed PT was recruited in the US between February and March of 2022 via a call to national PT organizations. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used determine if CE groups differed in PA promotion frequency (p ≤ .05; effect size = partial η2). RESULTS: Of the 109 participants recruited to complete the survey, 76 (69.7%) were included in the study due to data missing at random. Participants were stratified into four groups: 1) health promotion CE (HPCE n = 13) ; 2) behavior change CE (BCCE n = 4) ; 3) health promotion and behavior CE (HP-BC-CE, n = 22); and 4) no CE (NCE, n = 37). Frequency reporting of always promoting PA among patients with disability varied somewhat: 61% always (HPCE), 50% always BCCE, 45% HP-BC-CE, and 37% NCE. However, no significant differences were found between the groups H(3) = 3.03, p = .39. Any group differences were small in magnitude (partial η2 = .0005). CONCLUSIONS: The findings of this study add to the literature that PT inconsistently promote PA. Our findings also suggest that completing CE courses in health promotion and behavior change is unassociated with the frequency of PA promotion by PT. This suggests limited efficacy of such programs to enhance PT mindset, skill, and knowledge in PA promotion for people with disabilities, which are frequently cited as barriers by PT as reasons why they are hesitant to counseling patients on lifestyle PA behaviors.