Physiotherapy in Mount Hagen General Hospital: an audit of activity over a six-month period.
There is a lack of a sustainable physiotherapy service in most hospitals in Papua New Guinea. Many clinicians, managers and senior administrators appear unaware of the benefits that such a service can provide. This survey uses an audit tool, a modified Körner form, to evaluate the impact of a physiotherapy service within a provincial hospital during a six-month period. The audit measures number of patients seen, types of diagnosis, time spent with individual patients and number of treatment sessions provided. 571 patients were seen in the 6 months, of whom 308 were outpatients and 263 were inpatients. Inpatients received an average of 3 hours of treatment per patient, outpatients received 1 hour. Most patients seen were those who suffer disability as a result of their condition and who would traditionally have a poor prognosis without physiotherapy intervention. The most common conditions seen were neurological disability in adults and children, conditions requiring orthopaedic rehabilitation, burns, arthritic conditions and those requiring respiratory physiotherapy techniques. The physiotherapy department at the hospital was the only establishment in the district able to provide a rehabilitation service for these patients. Hence physiotherapy greatly improved the services available to the most sick and disabled patients within the community. The fact that outpatient follow-ups proved problematic for so many patients suggests that patients should be kept in hospital until their rehabilitation needs have been fully met.
Powell
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Mount Hagen General Hospital, Western Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea.
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003906:Developing Countries; D005260:Female; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006769:Hospitals, General; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008485:Medical Audit; D008875:Middle Aged; D020380:Needs Assessment; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D010219:Papua New Guinea; D010814:Physical Therapy Department, Hospital / Q000592:standards*; D026741:Physical Therapy Modalities / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010810:Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine / Q000592:standards* / Q000639:trends; D013997:Time Factors