COVID-19 Infection Prevention and Control Guidelines of Philippine Physical Therapy Association (PPTA) and Rehabilitation Department of Select Hospitals in the Philippines: Impact on Infection Trend.

Introduction: There is a paucity of evidence supporting the need for setting up hospital COVID-19 infection prevention and control (IPC) guidelines for Physical Therapists (PTs) that meet global standards. This study aimed to determine the consistency of IPC guidelines among different rehabilitation departments of hospitals within Region IV-A and the Philippine Physical Therapy Association’s (PPTA) recommendations with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) IPC guidance document. It also compared the hospitals’ consistency scores with the trend of infected PTs per month. Methods: In this descriptive cross-sectional survey, an online checklist was developed and validated to examine the consistency of the IPC documents of select hospitals in Region IV-A and PPTA to that of WHO. Eighty-four hospitals were invited to answer this checklist, while the researchers reviewed the PPTA recommendations. Hospital responses were summarized before computing percent consistency, while that of PPTA was directly computed. Temporal trend of the number of infected PTs over a 7-month period was analyzed using line graph. Results: Thirty-two hospitals participated in this study. Their guidelines demonstrated high consistency scores compared to PPTA recommendations, and the number of infected PT employees decreased for the first 5 months. The stark difference in consistency scores is potentially due to the number of guidelines considered by all hospitals and PPTA in developing their guidelines, inclusiveness of PPTA recommendations, and potential respondent bias. Discussion: This study showed that Region IV-A hospitals both have IPC guidelines consistent with global standards and reduced number of PTs infected with COVID-19. The benefit of adhering to specific IPC guidelines, such as WHO and PPTA recommendations, needs further study.