The prevalence of wound management physical therapist practice in the state of Texas.

INTRODUCTION: Wound management has become one of the ten physical therapy (PT) certification specialty areas. With this advanced clinical designation opportunity, more PT specialists and residencies with integumentary and wound management expertise will be needed for the educational and practice training of future specialists. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to characterize wound management practice by licensed physical therapists in Texas. METHODS: A Qualtrics survey was distributed to 19,159 licensed physical therapists. The questionnaire contained 23 questions that inquired into the subject's professional background, clinical experience, and opinions of wound care practice. RESULTS: The response rate was 9.6% (n = 1,839) and 1,643 respondents indicated that they were currently practicing. Although 69.1% of active physical therapists (n = 1,136) stated that they had practiced wound care at some point of their career, most of them do not practice wound care anymore and their reasons were discussed. Of those active physical therapists, 41.3% (n = 679) of them reported wound care was being practiced in their facilities, but only 18.3% (n = 311) directly practiced wound care. The respondents felt that the prevalence of wound management physical therapists practice over the last five years has been decreasing. CONCLUSION: The current prevalence of wound management practice is low and a decreasing trend of PT practice in wound care was observed in Texas. A limitation of this study is the low response rate. Future studies across different regions of the country are warranted.

Current Wound Care Education in Entry-Level Doctor of Physical Therapy Curricula.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate how wound care instruction is currently delivered within entry-level doctor of physical therapy (DPT) educational curricula. METHODS: An electronic survey was distributed to 226 DPT programs in the US. The questionnaire contained 27 questions about the characteristics of the wound care instruction as well as the credentials, clinical experience, and teaching experience of the instructors. Descriptive statistics were analyzed for each questionnaire item response. MAIN RESULTS: The response rate was 22.1% (n = 50). The majority of respondents reported 10 to 29 contact hours of wound care instruction throughout the curriculum. More than half of the programs reported that their students completed a wound care observation in clinical settings. Forty-four percent of programs stated that their students had the opportunity to participate in a clinical rotation focused solely on wound care. All respondents reported that their wound care instructors were physical therapists. Of those instructors, most were seasoned clinicians, and 46% held a wound care-related certification. CONCLUSIONS: Current entry-level DPT curricula provide physical therapy students with adequate contact hours in wound care and the opportunity for clinical experiences. The instructors are seasoned physical therapists, and nearly half of them hold advanced certification in the content area. Further studies are warranted to investigate how physical therapists practice in wound management in various clinical settings.