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Category: Project

Description: We will conduct a cross-sectional study involving a structured online survey that will be distributed through the “Interprovincial Order of Physiotherapists of Milan, Como, Cremona, Lecco, Lodi, Monza Brianza, Sondrio, Varese” (OFI). The Orders of Physiotherapists are the official institutional bodies (38 operating across the country at regional or provincial level) that legally recognize professional physical therapists allowed to practice in Italy. We will follow the Guidelines for Reporting Survey-Based Research and Observational Studies. To be included the participants will have to (i) be a Member of the Corporate Directorate of Health and Social Care Professions (DAPSS) in one of the seven Territorial Social-Health Authorities (ASST; the responsible bodies for the provision of hospital and primary care in the Lombardy Region) of the Metropolitan City of Milan and (ii) read and provide consent to the use of anonymous data in aggregated form for research purposes. We will develop an original web-based questionnaire using Google Forms to collect data. We will launch the survey from 1 April 2024 until 31 May 2024 through public institutional emails. Data will be collected anonymously, and participants will give their permission for the publication of aggregated findings. We will conduct a pilot test of our survey involving all the Governing Board members of the OFI, to assess its clarity and accuracy. Descriptive statistics will be presented as medians and interquartile ranges or absolute values, percentages, and frequencies, based on the nature of each variable. We will report the data in a narrative description or quantitative summary (table). We will also looked into the response rate. Data will be analyzed using SPSS version 26.0 (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA).