JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has required social, health, and rehabilitation organizations to implement remote physiotherapy (RP) as a part of physiotherapists’ daily practice. RP may improve access to physiotherapy as it delivers physiotherapy services to rehabilitees through telecommunication networks and internet (ICT). Even if RP has already been introduced in this century, physiotherapist opinion, amount of use, and form in daily practice has not been studied extensively.

Objective:

To investigate physiotherapists’ opinion of the current state of RP in Finland.

Methods:

A quantitative cross-sectional web-based questionnaire was sent to working-aged members of the Finnish Association of Physiotherapists (N= 5905) in March 2021 and to a physiotherapist in a private physiotherapy organization (N= 620) in May 2021. The questionnaire included questions on suitability (score: 0 = not suitable at all to 10 = fully suitable) of RP in different diseases and current state and implementation of RP in work among physiotherapists.

Results:

A total of 9.9% (662/6525; 76.1% female) of subjects (mean age 46.1 years, standard deviation 12.0) answered the questionnaire. The mean suitability “score” of RP in different disease groups differed from 3.3 (neurological diseases) to 6.1 (lung diseases). Between early 2020 i.e. just before COVID-19 pandemic and spring 2021, the proportion of subjects who used RP increased from 33.8% to 75.4% (P<.001) in the public sector and from 19.7% to 76.6% (P<.001) in the private sector. However, only 11.7% of subjects reported that they spent >20% of their practice time for RP in 2021. The real-time method was the most common RP method in both groups (public sector, 69.7% vs. private sector, 71.7%; P=.470). Among the total group, the three most commonly used technical equipment were computer/tablet (79.0%), smartphone (51.4%), and phone (voice call, 17.6%). The proportion of subjects who used computer/tablet in RP was higher in the private sector than in the public sector (82.8% vs. 67.6%; P=.010). A higher proportion of subjects in the public sector than in the private sector used phone (26.5% vs. 14.9%; P=.044).

Conclusions:

During the COVID-19 pandemic, physiotherapists increased their use of RP in their everyday practice, although practice time in RP was still low. When planning RP for rehabilitees, it should be considered that suitability of RP in different diseases seems to vary. Furthermore, our results brought up important new information for developing social, health, and rehabilitation education.