Perception and education of unilateral weightbearing amongst health care professionals.

Abstract

Studies have shown that healthy individuals cannot accurately judge the degree of weightbearing through one lower extremity [Bohannon R, Waters G, Cooper J. Perception of unilateral lower extremity weightbearing during bilateral upright stance. Percept Mot Skills 69;1989:875-80]. This study of 40 healthcare professionals assessed a simple education process to see if this perception could be improved. Weightbearing was assessed before and after the education process, a familiarisation exercise with a set of bathroom scales. The education process had no significant effect on individual's perception of weightbearing, nor was there any difference between members of the multi-disciplinary team. As an important aspect of patient care, further work is necessary to identify an accurate and reproducible method of quantifying weightbearing.