Assessment of Hospital Staff's Knowledge of Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine: A Survey-Based Study

Research has shown that osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) in hospitalized patients can shorten hospital length of stay. However, hospital staff may be unfamiliar with OMT and its use in this setting.

To assess a hospital staff's knowledge of osteopathic manipulative medicine (OMM) and investigate whether there is a correlation between job category and knowledge of OMM.

The study used a 13-item survey that was developed using SurveyMonkey. A brief description stating the purpose of the survey with a hyperlink to the survey was sent in an e-mail to the employee LISTSERV at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center. This LISTSERV included all 1933 employees at the medical center. After 10 days the survey was closed and the responses were collected and interpreted by a statistician and the primary investigator. Incomplete surveys were included.

A total of 474 employees (24.5%) returned the survey. Of these respondents, 267 (66.9%) responded that OMM could be done in the hospital. Only 97 respondents (24.6%) reported seeing OMM performed in the hospital. Physicians had the highest awareness of OMM (53.7%), compared with all other employees (7%).

An overall lack of knowledge exists regarding OMM among hospital staff, especially nonphysician employees, at a medical clinic.