Role of Physiotherapy in India – A Cross-sectional Survey to Study the Awareness and Perspect ive among Referr ing Doctors

Purpose of Study: Physiotherapy plays a major role in rehabilitating a patient. The role of a Physiotherapist is to deal with application of physiotherapy skills & knowledge to the assessment, design, delivery & evaluation of physiotherapeutic treatments in the management of the various conditions of acute or chronic sickness, disability or handicap. The history of physiotherapy, in India, was laid back in 1952 following an epidemic of poliomyelitis. Slowly and steadily physiotherapy did establish a firm base in India with lot of new developments, but still by large, physiotherapy remains a secondary referral profession not only in our country, but in other countries too. Further development of physiotherapy would be dependent on the awareness of referring physicians. It has been seen in the literature that there is a lack of awareness among the general practitioners and physician students. Hence this study was conducted to look at the Physicians (Doctors) Perspective as to how much importance is given to Physiotherapy, their perception of the role of a Physiotherapist & their need to interact with the Physiotherapist for effective treatment outcome of the patient.