Impact of a Brief Educational Headache Osteopathic Manipulative Treatment Intervention for Allopathic and Osteopathic Family Medicine Residents: A Pilot Study

Abstract

Background Headaches affect approximately 50% of all people. Osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) is a safe and effective treatment modality for headaches. Given the recent osteopathic and allopathic accreditation merger, there has been growing interest in OMT among allopathic physicians. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of a brief educational intervention on the confidence and knowledge of headache OMT for allopathic and osteopathic physicians. Methods Data from Postgraduate Year 1 and 2 Family Medicine resident physicians on their OMT rotation were collected via online surveys. Surveys were administered between August 2021 and June 2022; only residents who had seen patients 18 years and older and were referred to the OMT clinic for headache or neck pain treatment were included. Resident self-assessment was conducted before and after the educational intervention, which consisted of a prerecorded 20-minute lecture made available to the residents at the start of their OMT rotation. Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was performed using IBM SPSS Version 25. Statistical significance was set at a p value<0.05. Results Three allopathic-trained and 4 osteopathic-trained residents participated in the study. Our results demonstrated a statistically significant increase in comfort with OMT billing (p=0.041) and completing an OMT visit within the allotted amount of time (p=0.025) post intervention but not in any other survey items. Conclusions The brief educational intervention resulted in an improvement in billing and timely completion of an OMT visit by osteopathic and allopathic residents.