Making a Manual: The Utility of a Comprehensive Manual for Therapy Terminology for Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Residents

Research Objectives: The primary objective was to employ an intervention to improve resident confidence in understanding rehabilitation terminology from different therapy disciplines. The secondary objective was to improve the quality of interdisciplinary communication.

Design: Cross-sectional Survey Study, Quality Improvement Research.

Setting: Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) residency training program at an acute inpatient rehabilitation hospital as a part of a quaternary care hospital.

Participants: Eligibility criteria included current enrollment in the institution’s PM&R residency program. 12 out of 34 possible participants (5 PGY-2’s, 1 PGY-3, 6 PGY-4’s) responded to an optional survey and their responses were recorded. Population based sampling was utilized.

Interventions: A comprehensive manual was designed to include 55 pages of common physical, occupational, and speech-language therapy terms, scales, scores, and devices. This was distributed to rehabilitation residents from 3 class years.

Main Outcome Measures: The primary outcome measure is the level of resident confidence, as measured on a 5-point scale, with respect to the information contained in the rehabilitation manual.

Results: Residents demonstrated a significant increase in therapy terminology knowledge after reading the manual (M = 4.250, SD .754) compared to prior to reading the manual (M = 2.8333, SD .835), t(11) = 7.340, p = <.001. 91.6% of residents believe the information provided will help improve interprofessional communication in the rehabilitation setting. 69.3% of residents would regularly reference the manual provided. 92.3% of residents believe this manual would have been helpful prior to the start of their PGY-2 year.

Conclusions: This highlights the utility of integrating a comprehensive therapy manual into a PM&R residency training program to improve knowledge base and interdisciplinary communication. This would be most impactful for residents near the start of their training. These results may promote similar rehabilitation units to adopt their own institution specific manuals.

Author(s) Disclosures: none