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Training and assessment of physiotherapy assistants

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journal contribution
posted on 2018-04-24, 10:06 authored by Ruth Parry, Catherine D. Vass
This paper discusses some of the issues relevant to the role and training of physiotherapy assistants. It describes the processes of role definition, assessment and training of one particular assistant, developed in the context of a larger research study. A small survey of senior physiotherapists' views on task delegation, training and working with assistants was conducted, using semi-structured interviews. The method and findings are described; broad agreement between the physiotherapists was found. A training and assessment package was then developed and implemented. The training was specifically related to treatment of the upper limb of acute stroke patients. While delegation to assistants is part of everyday practice for many physiotherapists and the training of these staff a professional obligation, the structure and support to do so are often lacking. In the context of the description of a particular case, this paper provides some insights and points of interest for clinicians involved in training and task delegation to assistants.

Funding

The rehabilitation of arm function study is a three-year project funded by the NHS Research and Development Programme on Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke.

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies

Published in

Physiotherapy

Volume

83

Issue

1

Pages

33 - 40

Citation

PARRY, R. and VASS, C.D., 1997. Training and assessment of physiotherapy assistants. Physiotherapy, 83 (1), pp.33-40.

Publisher

Elsevier © Chartered Society of Physiotherapy

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

1997

Notes

This paper is closed access.

ISSN

0031-9406

Language

  • en