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Knowledge, attitude, practice and associated factors of Physiotherapy among Medical Doctors in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia – A cross sectional study

Rahul Krishnan Kutty PhD, PT, Hailay Gebremichael BSc PT, MPH(RH), & Shiby Vargehese PhD,PT

Introduction Physiotherapy is a service to people and populations to develop maintain and restore maximum movement and functional ability throughout the life span. Today, health practitioners including Medical doctors work alongside physiotherapists to offer the best treatment and recovery choices for their patients.

Objectives To find out knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of physiotherapy and factors associated with it among Medical Doctors in Tigary, Northern Ethiopia.

Methodology Institution based cross sectional study was carried out. A sample of Medical doctors working in public institutions/hospitals in and around Mekelle, Northern Ethiopia was included in the study. A Self administered semistructured questionnaire was used to collect data, collected data was cleaned and analyzed using SPSS version 16 for windows. The knowledge, attitude and practice were estimated using proportion. To predict the influence of factors associated with the knowledge, attitude, and practice, multivariate logistic regression was employed. The findings was generalized to the source population using the 95% confidence interval and determined the statistical significance at P<0.05. The final logistic model was checked for its adequacy and fitness.

Results The total numbers of respondents were 221 medical doctors out of them; nearly 50% of Medical doctor’s knowledge and attitude were inadequate and negative respectively. On the other hand 67% of medical doctors have good practice of physiotherapy. Specialists were 38.4 times more knowledgeable than General Practitioner. Medical doctors with in age 27-36 were 94% less likely to have Positive attitude than doctors within age group 22-26 and doctors within age group 39-45 were 99% less likely to have good attitude than doctors within age group 22-26. Medical doctors of age group 27-36 were 5 times more likely to have good practice of physiotherapy when compared to age group of 22-26.

Conclusion and recommendation The response rate was 94.4%. Nearly 50% of Medical doctor’s knowledge and attitude were inadequate and negative respectively. On the other hand 67% of Medical Doctors have good practice of physiotherapy. So it is highly recommended to include physiotherapy subjects in the curriculum of Medicine and IEC and BCC should be boosted by Health bureau to take step to bring up knowledge and good attitude among medical doctors.