Factors Influencing the Use of Outcome Measures for Patients with Low Back Pain: A Survey of Nigerian Physiotherapists

Abstract

Background: Low back pain is one of the important patients’ presenting complain that requires expert management from the physiotherapists. Yet no work was available for reference on the use of outcome measures for its evaluation by Nigeria physiotherapists. Objective: This study, therefore, investigated the outcome measures used by Nigerian physiotherapists to evaluate patients with Low Back Pain and the factors that influenced their use. Methods: A survey questionnaire was posted to 306 randomly selected mem- bers of the Nigeria Society of Physiotherapy (NSP). Data were analyzed using frequency, percentages, mean, ANOVA, and Pearson’s Chi-square. P-value was placed at 0.05. Results: 52.9% of the respondents (221) used a pain visual analog scale. Only 36.1% used LBP-specific clinical outcome measures. The factors that influenced their use were belief, attitude, knowledge, and choice. There was no significant difference between the majority of the factors and the use of clinical outcome measures. The P-values were 0.960, 0.648, 0.760 for belief, attitude and knowledge respectively. The only factor that had a significant difference (P = 0.029) with the use of clinical outcome measures was choice. Gender and postgraduate qualification had no significant influ- ence on the use of clinical outcome measures at the P-value of 0.117 and 0.510 respectively. Conclusion: Pain visual analog scale is the outcome measure frequently used by Nigeria Physiotherapists to evaluate patients with Low Back Pain. Belief, attitude, knowledge, and choice are the factors that influ- enced the use. There is a need to incorporate the use of LBP-specific outcome measures by Nigerian physiotherapists while treating patients with LBP.