Awareness of physiotherapy among general practitioners in a district of Punjab

Background: Physiotherapy is also known as rehabilitation science, which helps to improve an individual’s ability to lead an active and a healthy lifestyle. Physiotherapists especially in india, are relying on the physicians as their primary source of reference. A physician can help the patients by timely referring them to a physiotherapist, which can help in proper and effective rehabilitation of the patient. Therefore this study was conducted, in order to know how aware the physicians are in terms of need of physiotherapy for their patients. Materials and Methods: This study was conducted in Jalandhar city, a district in Punjab state, involving 102 physicians of the city by a questionnaire format, over a period of 6 months from February 2017 to July 2017. All willing general practitioners from various streams along with super specialists were included in the study. Results: There was awareness regarding physiotherapy among general practitioners of Jalandhar city. With respect to various branches of physiotherapy, Neurology was the most known to physicians accounting for 84(82.3%) out of 102 physicians knowing about it, followed by orthopedic physiotherapy known to 82(80.3%) physicians, followed by awareness of Sports rehabilitation in 54(52.9%) physicians. Conclusion: The study concludes that there is lack of awareness regarding need of physiotherapy in Ayurvedic, Homeopathic physicians. Allopathic physicians and surgeons are very much aware of the need of physiotherapy in improving the quality of life of the patients.