Abstract
Objective: To investigate whether a physical therapist trained through the Mechanical Diagnosis and Therapy (MDT) diploma program could guess psychological Patient Reported Outcome Measure (PROM) scores of individuals with low back pain (LBP) by taking patient history and completing a physical evaluation. Methods: Ten participants with LBP completed PROMs immediately before history taking and again after a physical evaluation. PROMs included the Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS), Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia (TSK), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and Pain Coping Strategy Questionnaire. A physical therapist who completed the MDT diploma program took the patients’ history and completed their physical evaluation. The therapist completed the same PROMs immediately after both history taking and physical evaluation. Correlations between patient and therapist scores were calculated using Spearman’s ρ. Results: Statistically significant positive correlations were detected in the PCS (ρ = 0.65) and TSK (ρ = 0.78) before history taking, and in the PCS (ρ = 0.81) and TSK (ρ = 0.74) after physical evaluation. Discussion: The results are based on one MDT therapist and generalizability of the findings is limited. However, the current preliminary findings justify the need for further studies to explore effective post-graduate training to promote a patient centered approach.
Highlights
To investigate whether a physical therapist trained through the Mechanical Diagnosis and Therapy (MDT) diploma program could guess psychological Patient Reported Outcome Measure (PROM) scores of individuals with low back pain (LBP) by taking patient history and completing a physical evaluation
The primary aim of the current study was to investigate the possibility that a physical therapist trained through the MDT diploma program could guess PROM scores of individuals with LBP, which were used in the previous study [4], through history taking and physical evaluation
The current study preliminarily investigated whether a physical therapist trained through the MDT diploma program could guess patients’ PROM scores through the MDT history taking and the MDT physical evaluation
Summary
A study by Miki et al [4] included 78 patients with LBP and 21 physical therapists, and investigated whether the physical therapists could guess the scores of psychological Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) through physical therapy evaluation. A potential reason for the discrepancy between the studies [4] [5] is the physical therapists’ training level, and it was added to a research agenda to investigate whether certain post-graduate training programs might affect the ability of physical therapists to guess patient psychological PROM scores through physical therapy evaluation [4]. The primary aim of the current study was to investigate the possibility that a physical therapist trained through the MDT diploma program could guess PROM scores of individuals with LBP, which were used in the previous study [4], through history taking and physical evaluation.
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