Inter-examiner reliability of diplomats in the mechanical diagnosis and therapy system in assessing patients with shoulder pain

Abstract

Objective:

To investigate the inter-examiner reliability of Mechanical Diagnosis and Therapy (MDT)-trained diplomats in classifying patients with shoulder disorders. The MDT system has demonstrated acceptable reliability when used in patients with spinal disorders; however, little is known about its utility when used for appendicular conditions.

Methods:

Fifty-four clinical scenarios were created by a group of 11 MDT diploma holders based on their clinical experience with patients with shoulder pain. The vignettes were made anonymous, and their clinical diagnoses sections were left blank. The vignettes were sent to a second group of six international McKenzie Institute diploma holders who were asked to classify each vignette according to the MDT categories for upper extremity. Inter-examiner agreement was evaluated with kappa statistics.

Results:

There was ‘very good’ agreement among the six MDT diplomats for classifying the McKenzie syndromes in patients with shoulder pain (kappa = 0·90, SE = 0·018). The raw overall level of multi-rater agreement among the six clinicians in classifying the vignettes was 96%. After accounting for the actual MDT category for each vignette, kappa and the raw overall level of agreement decreased negligibly (0·89 and 95%, respectively).

Discussion:

Using clinical vignettes, the McKenzie system of MDT has very good reliability in classifying patients with shoulder pain. As an alternative, future reliability studies could use real patients instead of written vignettes.

Keywords:

• Inter-examiner reliability
• McKenzie
• Mechanical diagnosis and therapy
• Shoulder
• Clinical vignette

Acknowledgements

We thank the following MDT diploma holders for volunteering as raters for this study: Cora Aytona, PT; Yvonne Bandthelu, PT; Colin Davies, Steven Heffner, DC; Mark Miller, PT; Dave Pleva, PT.

We would also like to thank the following MDT diploma holders for volunteering to create the vignettes used for this study: Susan Bamberger, Chris Chase, PT; Gary Dykes, PT; Kim Greene, PT; Nick Hazledine, PT; Scott Herbowy, PT; Joshua Kidd, PT; Audrey Long, PT; Kristi Maguire, PT; Dave Oliver, PT; Pete Wilde, PT.

We would like to thank the Dean’s Office of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Western University for financial support of this study.