Knowledge and Attitude of Physical Therapists towards Sleep Quality Assessment

Aims: The aims of the current study are to determine the knowledge of physical therapists towards sleep and to analyse attitude of physical therapists towards sleep quality assessment.

Study Design: This is a cross-sectional study.

Place and Duration of Study: The study was conducted among the physical therapists of government and private hospitals of Nawabshah, Hyderabad and Karachi between July 2017 and January 2018.

Methodology: Modified form of “Assessment of Sleep Knowledge in Medical Education (ASKME) Survey” questionnaire was distributed among 170 physical therapists of government and private hospitals of Nawabshah, Hyderabad and Karachi. Questionnaire consists of 4 parts, including demographics questions, assessment of patient’s sleep, physical therapist’s attitude towards sleep quality and assessing their basic sleep knowledge. Data was analysed on the basis frequency and percentages.

Results: The results of our study confirm that sleep medicine knowledge was generally low in physical therapists. Among all the physical therapists only 9.5% had higher score while remaining 90.5% had obtained low score in sleep knowledge. Majority of the physical therapists 57.6% routinely assessed their patients sleep by asking subjective information about the quality of sleep and sleep habits. A small number of respondents 23.4% referred their patients to sleep specialists if they suspected any sleep issues. Moreover 49.4% routinely assessed the factors that disturb patients sleep. While only small population 18.4% agreed that they did not know how to assess sleep quality of the patients.

Conclusions: The current study concluded that the majority of physical therapists agreed that sleep is important to people's health and they routinely assessed their patients sleep by asking subjective information about the quality of sleep and sleep habits. On the other hand, sleep medicine knowledge was generally low among physical therapists.