Improving musculoskeletal physiotherapists' confidence in patient-centred care informed by acceptance and commitment...

Patient-centred care is essential for high quality musculoskeletal care, however, few evidence-based opportunities exist that address the barriers to implementation for clinicians.

To develop and evaluate a simulation-based educational strategy for musculoskeletal physiotherapists to increase knowledge and confidence in patient-centred care.

Repeated-measures, single-group educational interventional descriptive study. Primary outcome was participant-reported knowledge and confidence in patient-centred care. Customized survey data was collected at baseline (T1) (N = 22), immediately after a face-to-face workshop (T2) (N = 22), and six weeks after the workshop (T3) (N = 17). Secondary outcomes included sustained implementation using the Normalization Measure Development (NoMAD) tool. Repeated-measures ANOVA was used to analyse primary outcomes.

Our participants were typically female (72%), early career (mean 3.3 years post-graduate) and culturally diverse (67%). Significant increases in participant confidence were noted at all time points on all five learning outcomes (repeated measures ANOVA, p < 0.001 to p = 0.009). Participants had very high baseline knowledge and no further increases were found following the intervention (p > 0.05). Normalization Measure Development data indicated high coherence, high cognitive participation, and high reflexive monitoring, with neutral results for collective action.

A novel, psychologically-informed, simulation-based educational strategy is effective in improving musculoskeletal physiotherapist confidence in patient-centred care. Participants reported implementation of skills learnt in the workshop into subsequent clinical practice.