Phase 2 - feasibility of the stratified blended physiotherapy approach
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RECRUITMENT, RECRUITMENT
Participating physiotherapists received a four-hour training session on how to integrate the Stratified Blended Physiotherapy approach into their daily practice and the study procedures. Physiotherapists were asked to aim for the inclusion of at least two patients. Recruitment of patients for the feasibility study lasted from April 2019 until June 2019. During the initial registration, eligible patients were verbally informed about the study and invited to participate in the data collection by the participating physiotherapy practice secretariat. Every potentially eligible patient who was not invited by the physiotherapy practice secretariat, was invited by participating physiotherapists. If the patient agreed to participate in the data collection, contact details were sent to the researcher via a secure messenger service. Thereafter, the researcher sent an information letter to the patient by email. Subsequently, the researcher contacted the patient by phone to check whether the patient read an understood the information letter. If so, the researcher screened the eligibility criteria. After informing the participant about the study and the assessment of their eligibility, an informed consent form was sent to the participant by mail. After consenting to participate, the patient was asked to send the signed informed consent form back to the research team. An extra screening of the eligibility criteria was performed by the physiotherapist during the first physiotherapy session.
A digital questionnaire was sent to the patients three months after the first physiotherapy session. There was no maximum number of patients that could be included per physiotherapist. Physiotherapists received a questionnaire at the end of the patient recruitment period. Quantitative data collection in the feasibility study consisted of three measures:
Patients’ satisfaction with treatment was measured with the Global Perceived Effect – Dutch Version scale (GPE-DV) [Whether a patient received a smartphone app or paper-based workbook and subsequently patient willingness to recommend either the smartphone app or paper-based workbook was evaluated using the Net Promoter Score (NPS) [Patients’ experienced usability of the smartphone app and physiotherapists’ experienced usability of the physiotherapist dashboard was evaluated with the System Usability Scale (SUS) [
Qualitative data collection consisted of semi-structured interviews with both patients and physiotherapists. All physiotherapists and patients were consecutively invited by e-mail to participate in a semi-structured interview. Semi-structured interviews were held after patients completed the intervention. An exploratory, descriptive phenomenological approach was used, with thematic analyses [