3.2. Practice pattern
Firstly, we calculate the frequency and percentage of a physiotherapist
who used eighteen different intervention options (in table 1) .
Among all eighteen interventions, the highest 92.4% physiotherapist
frequently used exercise therapy, 83.2% occasionally used mechanical
traction and 66.9% never used acupuncture, while the highest 37.6%
participants said that Mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy was
unknown to them. Figure 1 shows the average number of
participants used three groups of interventions according to the
frequency of use (frequently, occasionally, never). On average, 293
participants (69.3% of total) occasionally used not recommended
intervention, 57 (13.5% of total) frequently and only 73 (17.3% of
total) participants never used such intervention. For the partially
recommended group, the average number of participants for frequent,
occasional, and never used intervention was 141 (33.3% of total), 185
(43.7% of total), and 97 (23% of total) respectively. Nonetheless,
only 52 (12.3% of total) participants frequently used recommended
intervention on an average. One the other hand, on an average, 91
(21.5% of total) physiotherapist either do not offer or do not know
about the recommended interventions.
Secondly, table 2 has shown the result of the analysis of good,
moderate, and poor practice patterns after calculating given points to
each physiotherapist for the choice of different group interventions.
The prevalence of good practice among physiotherapist of Bangladesh were
14%, however, 62.4% and 23.6% did moderate and poor practice
respectively. A higher number of the younger group (18-25 years of age)
of physiotherapists do good practice. Among all the demographic and
professional factors in this study, only the marital status (P = 0.003)
and graduation institute category (P = 0.002) were significant factors
for practice pattern variation (Table 2).
In addition to 18 interventions, we evaluated a diagnostic (radiological
imaging) dependency, LBP patient category has commonly seen, and cure
rate patterns. We estimated the dependency of a physiotherapist on
radiological imaging for LBP diagnosis and found 97.8% physiotherapists
either frequently or occasionally use x-ray and/or MRI. For LBP patient
category, 67.2% of participants said that they have seen mainly chronic
LBP patients in their practice. When asked cure rate, 46.8%
physiotherapists claimed that the cure rate of their LBP patients was
71-90% and 35.7% said this rate was between 51-70%.