Purpose: To focus on patient education in the home health care setting and to know if physical therapists provide educational information in each of the five areas developed by Sluijs. Subjects: 16 patients that were receiving physical therapy in their home and the 2 physical therapists that provided their treatment through a home health agency in Broward County. Methodology: A checklist of educational area developed by Sluijs was used to record educational aspects when the researcher observed treatment sessions. Frequency distributions, consisting of means and standard deviations, and Pearson product-moment coefficient of correlation were performed. Results: Physical therapists in the home health care setting provided education to their patients in three of the five educational areas developed by Sluijs. Those three areas were, in rank order, home exercise instruction, advice about illness-related behaviors, and information about the illness. The other two areas, stress counseling and health education, were not educated in for any of the sixteen patients. Discussion: The areas developed by Sluijs represent a global education in the profession of physical therapy. Physical therapists in the home health care setting do not provide their patients with a global education because they do not educate in all five areas. Physical therapists in home health need to educate their patients in all five areas to provide their patients a global education.
| Date of Award | Jan 1 1998 |
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| Original language | English |
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