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pp.62-73
Pediatric home-based physical therapy (PHBPT) provides professional rehabilitation programs at the patient’s home, where the activities of daily life are actually performed. PHBPT also allows to avoid the difficulties of transporting children with disabilities to the clinic. Despite these advantages, PHBPT is not yet widely practiced in Korea. There is little objective information regarding the opinions of the main stakeholders on PHBPT. To investigate the awareness and demand of PHBPT among the main stakeholders, 41 pediatric physical therapists (PT) (of 60 contacted) were recruited from different regions of Korea on the basis of the regional population distribution. The recruited PTs completed their questionnaires and also participated in collecting questionnaires from 35 medical doctors (MD) with whom they worked and from randomly selected 201 parents of children with disabilities recruited. The overall response rate was 85.5%. The awareness of PHBPT differed between PTs (95.1%) and parents (67.2%) (p<.001). The survey showed that 82.9% of MDs had at least heard about PHBPT. Significantly more parents (83.5%) than MDs (57.1%), and 70.0% of PTs, wanted to start PHBPT service immediately (p<.001). Significantly more parents (90.0%) than PTs (73.2%) were willing to participate in PHBPT (p<.001). Opinions on the details of policies and procedures (i.e., necessity for prescription, treatment cost, and treatment frequency) differed among the respondent groups, but all favored a minimal qualification of 6∼10 years of pediatric experience and a treatment session duration of 1 hour. These findings provide objective information to support health service administrators to understand the current demand and develop feasible policies and procedures of PHBPT in Korea.
