Abstract

Utilization of individual professional skills depends on the cooperation among health team members and the extent to which they value the knowledge of other team members in discharging their services to the patient, who is the main focus of the team. The study aims to determine the awareness of the importance and utilization of physiotherapy services among nurses in tertiary hospitals in Anambra state. This was a cross sectional survey involving 201 nurses, consecutively selected from tertiary hospitals in Anambra state. The study instrument used was a 28-item self-reported questionnaire and data obtained were analyzed using descriptive statistics; Kruskal-Wallis test Spearman-rank order correlation at α = 0.05. Majority of the participants portrayed good level of awareness (74.1%), while about 56.2% of the participants portrayed good level of utilization and 53.7% had good perception of how important physiotherapy services are in patients’ management. More Senior and Principal Nursing Officers than Nursing Officers I and Nursing Officers II had higher awareness and importance level (40.06+5.32 and 68.23+10.26 respectively), but fair utilization (7.86+2.315) of physiotherapy services. There was also significant correlation between awareness and importance, awareness and utilization, and importance and utilization with P‹0.05. Though nurses portrayed a good awareness level of physiotherapy services, majority of them indicated that they needed to be enlightened more on roles of physiotherapy services. There is however the need to raise awareness of the importance of physiotherapy services among nurses

Keywords: Awareness, Importance, Utilization, Physiotherapy and Nurses.