Physiotherapy Involvement in School Based Sports Activities in Enugu Metropolis
Abstract
Sports-based activities have become an integral part of school curriculum and its effectiveness on students’ performance cannot be overstated. However, the drawback associated with increased participation in sports has always been the high risk of musculoskeletal injury, especially since personnel supervising these school sports activities are not always medically trained. The objective was therefore to determine the extent of involvement of sports physiotherapists in these activities from schools’ awareness to their willingness to adopt physiotherapy using qualitative interview method with open-ended questions.
The study included 20 schools in Enugu metropolis with a mean student population of 350. The results showed that as much as 90% & 15% of the schools were aware of physiotherapy and sport physiotherapy respectively, 100% agreed with the benefits sports physiotherapists would bring to their schools, and 65% was willing to adopt sports physiotherapy with the most common limiting factor being financial constraints.
In conclusion, the study showed that at large most schools do not recognize the value of sports physiotherapy in injury prevention & management and financial constraints played a role in the poor uptake of physiotherapists in schools. This creates the need to implement policies that would be advantageous to inculcating sports physiotherapists in school-based sports activities for injury prevention & management.
Keywords: sports, physiotherapy, school-based activities, involvement
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