Physiotherapists’ use of outcome measures in the assessment of lateral elbow tendinopathy: An international online survey

Objective: To examine the frequency of use and establish routine clinical practice of patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), performance-based OMs and clinician-reported OMs in the assessment of a suspected case of lateral elbow tendinopathy (LET). Methods: Physiotherapists from eight countries completed an anonymous online survey, rating their frequency of use (never, rarely, sometimes, often and always) for unidimensional PROMs, multidimensional PROMs, performance-based OMs and clinician-reported OMs. To establish clinical practices, responses were dichotomised into routine (≥70% often/always) and not-routine (≥70% sometimes/rarely/never); items below both thresholds were classified as neither. Results: Two hundred ninety-nine respondents completed the survey. No outcome measure met the criteria for routine practice. Eight of 17 multidimensional PROMs, and six of eight clinician-reported OMs met the criteria for not-routine practice. All unidimensional PROMs and performance-based OMs, and a select number of multidimensional PROMs and clinician-reported OMs did not meet the threshold for routine or not-routine practice. Conclusions: Our results suggest no single outcome measure is routinely used by physiotherapists assessing a suspected case of LET. It is plausible that physiotherapists select OMs based on patient presentation, rather than the clinical diagnosis, or that outcome measures are perhaps seen more as a research tool than common place in clinical practice.