Physiotherapists' experience of client participation in physiotherapy interventions: A phenomenographic study

The aim of the study was to describe, using qualitative phenomenographic interviews, how physiotherapists experience client participation in physiotherapy interventions. The objective of phenomenographic research is to identify and describe various ways of experiencing the investigated phenomenon. Eleven respondents were strategically selected according to the maximum variation strategy with variations in: gender, seniority and areas of physiotherapy. Three qualitatively different descriptive categories were indentified with critical variations in paradigms of health and goal-setting procedures - A: Collaboration, i.e. an experience of client participation from a biopsychosocial collaborative view of intervention in which the client enter into equal partnership with the physiotherapist and thereby are jointly responsible for intervention, goalsetting and outcome; B: Guidance, i.e. an experience of client participation from a guided biomedical view of intervention, in which the client is guided by the physiotherapist in an unequal partnership in intervention and goal-setting; and C: Expertise, i.e. an experience of client participation from a paternalistic, biomedical view of intervention, in which the client sees the physiotherapist as an expert, who decides and controls the intervention and goal-setting. The results have made some earlier tacit professional physiotherapy knowledge explicit and may increase the understanding of how different experiences of client participation influence interventions.