Demographic, practice and clinical management characteristics of osteopaths referring to podiatrists: secondary analysis of a nationally representative sample of Australian osteopaths

Fleischmann, M; Vaughan, B; Bird, Adam; Grace, S; Fitzgerald, K; McLeod, G

doi:10.26181/20140994.v1

Demographic, practice and clinical management characteristics of osteopaths referring to podiatrists: secondary analysis of a nationally representative sample of Australian osteopaths

journal contribution

posted on 2022-06-24, 06:28 authored by M Fleischmann, B Vaughan, Adam BirdAdam Bird, S Grace, K Fitzgerald, G McLeod

Background: Interprofessional care is paramount in contemporary healthcare practice. How different professions interact, and the characteristics of those practitioners who practice in an interprofessional way are rarely described in the literature. The aim of the current work was to identify the demographic, practice and clinical management characteristics of Australian osteopaths who report referring to podiatrists. Methods: The study was a secondary analysis of data from the Osteopathy Research and Innovation Network (ORION). Inferential statistics were generated to identify statistically significant demographic, practice and clinical management characteristics associated with referrals to podiatrists by Australian osteopaths. Results: Nine-hundred and ninety-two Australian osteopaths responded to the questionnaire. Sending referrals to a podiatrist was reported by 651 participants (65.6%). Female Australian osteopaths were less likely to report referring to podiatrists compared to male osteopaths (OR 0.76, 95%CI 0.59–0.99). Australian osteopaths who reported referring to podiatrists were more likely to report receiving referrals from podiatrists (OR 9.75, 95%CI 6.98–13.61), use orthopaedic testing in patient assessment (OR 7.62, 95%CI 2.82–20.60), and often treat patients with postural disorders (OR 1.71, 95%CI 1.03–2.26), compared to osteopaths who do not refer to podiatrists. Conclusion: This study provides initial evidence for the referral relationship between Australian osteopaths and podiatrists. Further work could explore the nature of these referrals, including the complaints resulting in referral and outcomes of care. This information will be useful to those involved in health policy development and the professions advocating for their role in the wider healthcare system.

Funding

Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions The ORION project is funded by Osteopathy Australia. The funding source had no influence in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript. The research reported in this paper is the sole responsibility of the authors and reflects the independent ideas and scholarship of the authors alone.

History

Publication Date

2022-12-01

Journal

BMC Health Services Research

Volume

22

Issue

1

Article Number

ARTN 224

Pagination

9p.

Publisher

BMC

ISSN

1472-6963

Rights Statement

© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.