A Survey of Canadian Physiotherapists' and Physiotherapy Students' Knowledge and Use of Executive Functioning Assessments in Clinical Practice

Purpose: This study examined what physiotherapists and physiotherapy students understand and know about executive functioning (EF), what EF outcome measures they use clinically, and whether their primary area of practice influences their assessment practices. Method: An open online survey was distributed to registered members of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association, its various divisions, and colleges of physiotherapy within Canada that took approximately 15 minutes to complete and was available for 13 months. Pearson correlation was used to assess the relationship between subjective and objective understanding and knowledge of EF (UKEF) and a one-way multivariate analysis of variance was used to analyze differences in survey responses based on respondents' primary area of practice. Results: A total of 335 respondents consented to participate (completion rate = 78.4%). There was a significant moderate positive correlation between subjective and objective UKEF (r = 0.43; 95% CI: 0.32, 0.54; n = 260; p < 0.001). Significant differences in survey responses were related to physiotherapists' primary areas of practice (i.e., musculoskeletal, neurological, cardiorespiratory, or multi-systems; F-12,F-555.89 = 2.29, p = 0.008; Wilks ? = 0.880; partial eta(2) = 0.042). Conclusions: Respondents reported that they had good subjective UKEF, but this was only moderately correlated with objective UKEF.

Automated summary

This study investigated the understanding and knowledge of executive functioning (EF) among physiotherapists and physiotherapy students, as well as the outcome measures they use in clinical practice. The results showed that participants reported good subjective understanding of EF, but this was only moderately correlated with objective understanding. Additionally, there were significant differences in survey responses based on the primary area of practice of the physiotherapists.