Impact of Physical Therapist Assistants on Outcomes in Patients with Shoulder Pain: A Retrospective Analysis

Research Objectives: To investigate the impact of rehabilitation team composition on the outcomes of physical therapy treatment for shoulder pain.

Design: Retrospective cohort study

Setting: Multiple outpatient physical therapy clinics within a single hospital system

Participants: Patients (n=123) who received physical therapy for shoulder pain after 2015 were included in the current study. Exclusion criteria was history of shoulder surgery. Inclusion criteria included patients between the ages of 18 and 90 years old.

Interventions: Patients received standard physical therapy treatment for shoulder pain at the discretion of the treating clinicians. During the course of physical therapy, treatment was completed by a physical therapist only (PT only group) or a team composed of a physical therapist and physical therapist assistant (PTA team group).

Main Outcome Measures: Primary outcome measures include pain (Visual Analog Scale) and function (Quick DASH score). Pain was measured for all patients and Quick DASH score was measured in a subset of patients due to limited data. Outcomes also include total number of visits and number of PT visits per patient.

Results: There was no significant difference between the average improvement in pain or Quick DASH score between the two groups (p=.75 and p=.34). Both the PT only group and the PTA team group individually had statistically significant improvements in pain (p=.04 and p<.01) and Quick Dash score (p <.01 and p<.01) post-rehabilitation. There was a statistically significant difference between the average number of visits (p=.02) between the PT only group and the PTA only group with an average number of visits of 6.9 visits and 8.1 visits.

Conclusions: There was no difference in outcomes of pain and function among patients with shoulder pain who were treated by a PT only or had a PTA in their rehabilitation team. However, the PT only group used less visits to achieve similar results.

Author(s) Disclosures: None of the authors have any conflicts to disclose.