Promotion of physical activity for persons with mobility disabilities: The healthcare provider role and perspective.

Background

Persons with mobility disabilities (PwMD) face more secondary health complications than the general population and are one of the least physically active groups in the United States leading to costly health care utilization and decreased functional engagement. It is possible that a myriad of negative health outcomes could be reduced by increased physical activity (PA) engagement. Despite frequent interaction with PwMD, it is unclear how healthcare providers (HCPs) are promoting PA within the current healthcare landscape.

Objective

The objective of this research study was to explore the current state of rehabilitation services to educate and prepare PwMD to engage in community-based PA.

Methods

This mixed-methods study utilized a 1) cross-sectional survey and 2) semi-structured interviews of HCPs.

Results

122 HCPs completed the quantitative survey and 21 completed follow-up semi-structured interviews. While HCPs indicated they do educate on PA; they don't feel PwMD are able to engage in PA successfully by inpatient discharge and move to outpatient or community settings. The interviews expanded upon this generating the following themes: Balancing Barriers and Individualization, Unclear Roles and Process, Prefer to Refer, and Preconceptions and Bias.

Conclusions

Overall, this study highlighted several key factors that influence how and why HCPs promote PA and what their current perceptions and knowledge of it is. It is clear from the data that both proximal and distal changes to healthcare provision at the provider and systems levels could facilitate improved PA promotion for PwMD.