"I think it, but don't often write it": the barriers to charting in private practice

To describe barriers to charting identified by physiotherapists working in private practice in New Brunswick.

Physiotherapists were invited to focus-group interviews to discuss the results of a comprehensive chart audit. Sixty-nine physiotherapists who responded were assigned to nine focus groups. Seven of nine audiotaped interviews (49 participants) were of sufficient quality to be transcribed and imported into qualitative data analysis software for thematic analysis.

Participants described the challenges of including charting in their routine client care. Barriers included the disjuncture between charting and thinking, the translation of impairment goals to functional goals, the time it takes to chart, fear of failure, and the difficulty of predicting length of treatment. Strategies to facilitate charting were suggested by participants.

Understanding barriers to charting in private practice is necessary to improve the quality of documentation. Barriers described are related to the fast-moving nonverbal, kinaesthetic, and cognitive process that is clinical reasoning in physiotherapy. This tacit, implicit process is mismatched with the charting task, which requires that the implicit become explicit in written form. Strategies to facilitate charting noted by participants address some of these issues; however, a broader, profession-wide discussion is necessary.