An investigation of allied health and medical clinicians’ viewpoint on prosthetic rehabilitation and cognition

Figures & data

Table 1. Participant inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Allied health (OT and PT)
Inclusion Registered with governing body, Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency as either an OT or a PT Working within the local health district	Exclusion Allied health assistants OT or PT students
Medical
Inclusion Registration with the relevant governing body Three (3) or more months experience with vascular or rehabilitation medicine within the local health district Holding specialist, senior medical officer, registrar, resident medical officer, junior medical officer, visiting medical officer or casual medical officer status	Exclusion Less than 3 months experience within the local health district Student medical officers

Table 2. Data collection and analysis.

Data collected	Time of collection			Participants	Analysis method
	June	July	August
Survey—open response questions Survey—quantitative		x	x	OT and PT clinicians N = 24	Braun and Clarke thematic analysis as per Table 3. Descriptive statistics as seen in Table 4
Interviews	x	x	x	Vascular and rehabilitation medicine specialists N = 10	Braun and Clarke thematic analysis as per Table 3.

NB: Where x indicated the months in which data collection occurred, showing a concurrence of data collection.

Table 3. Braun and Clarke six stages of thematic analysis.

Phase number and title	Description
1—Familiarization	The researcher immerses themselves into the information and then withdraws enough to see the information as data. In this study this phase meant verbatim transcription of interviews and reviewing notes taken from those sessions while listening to the audio. It also involved reviewing the open ended survey data.
2—Coding	Data points that have relevance to the research question were extracted. Coding may be completed electronically (NVIVO or Excel) or manually (highlighted). In this study coding occurred both manually and within Excel.
3—Generating initial themes	The researcher applied titles to a wide range of data that have a shared idea or meaning, either obviously or more obscured. Within this study, this phase included placing codes from phase 2 into groupings until all codes had been allocated.
4—Developing and reviewing themes	Review and exploration of whether the original themes are nuanced enough to answer the questions set out in the aim, and whether the themes are deep enough for explanation. Within this study, it meant discussion with supervisors as to whether codes fit into the themes generated in phase 3.
5—Refining, defining and naming themes	The researcher develops the themes to the point where a definition for each of the themes can be produced. For this study, it meant that the discussion from phase 4 resulted in two subsequent repeats of phases 3 and 4 to establish defined themes.
6—Analysis and reporting of themes	The final writing of the themes, acknowledging that analysis and writing has been occurring throughout the phases. For this study, it meant ensuring that the themes met the overall aims of the study.

Table 4. Clinician experience and amputee awareness.

Clinician information	PT response (n = 14)	OT response (n = 10)
Years of experience
≤5	3	2
6–10	5	3
≥11	6	5
Post graduate amputee education
Yes	10	4
No	4	6
Confidence in treating amputee patients
Not or mildly confident	7	4
Confident or very confident	7	6
Number of amputee patients clinicians see/year
0–5	7	2
6–10	2	5
11–15	2	2
≥16	3	1

Figure 1. Factors that clinicians consider when prescribing prosthetic rehabilitation.

Figure 2. Overview of clinicians involved and considerations for prosthetic rehabilitation. # Note these are example topics and questions designed to provide a guide only, not an exhaustive list of discipline specific.

Figure 3. Framework proposed for multidisciplinary considerations when prescribing prosthetic rehabilitation.