‘What should we teach?’ A U.K. survey comparing clinician and academic views on content of the pre-registration musculoskeletal physiotherapy curriculum

Abstract

Evolving evidence underpinning musculoskeletal physiotherapy challenges the definitions of contemporary clinical practice and pre-registration curricula. This research uses an online national survey to compare clinician (272) and lecturer (61) views on the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy’s four pillars of practice (manual therapy and therapeutic handling; exercise, movement, and rehabilitation; therapeutic and diagnostics technologies; and allied approaches, including psychologically informed approaches) with the aim of establishing their clinical and educational utility. Findings indicate that close alignment exists between practising U.K. musculoskeletal physiotherapists and U.K. pre-registration physiotherapy lecturers on the ongoing relevance of exercise therapy and psychologically informed approaches to behaviour change. The paper also shows that a mismatch exists in the clinical and educational use of both manual therapy and electrotherapy between practising physiotherapists and physiotherapy lecturers. Future research should focus on the highlighted need to continue to align pre-registration musculoskeletal curricula with both the evidence base and clinical practice for the curricular areas of electrotherapy and manual therapy. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .