Abstract
Introduction: The home health care industry is growing and now employs nearly 7% of all physical therapists according to the American Physical Therapy Association. It is important that physical therapists new to home health care are able to access information that informs them about important issues that affect both the patient and themselves as a professional while considering employment in this field. This is two part study that implements a grounded theory method with snowball sampling initially interviewing 11 home health physical therapists. Physical therapists targeted for interview came from a range of therapy specialties and experience levels. Each interview was recorded with the consent of the interviewee, transcribed and coded using grounded theory principles. The study investigated two major research questions: What professional factors are important to the provision of physical in the home environment for therapists coming into the home health industry for the first time? What type of benefits, barriers and social issues do physical therapists face when providing home health services? Results: Major categories identified included work environment, work characteristics, communication, patient and family, and work-life balance. Analysis of these categories suggest that factors influencing physical therapists provision of care in the home both positively and negatively most commonly include flexible scheduling, documentation, varied patient case types, accountability, the home environment, fulfillment from providing care in the home and transportation. Flexibility in scheduling and the ability to work in a real environment where you can adjust care to the functional environment of the patient were the two most common factors identified. Discussion: Focus groups and more descriptive interview questions should be included in future interviews to help improve the efficiency of the survey as well as to identify more unique specific factors related to the work structure, corporate culture, and other unidentified categories of factors affecting home care professionals.