Does assessment of fall risk based on clinical judgment differ with physical therapists’ experience?: Video clip examinations of timed “up & go” test performance of elderly people

Abstract

[Purpose] The purpose of the present study was to examine whether the assessment of fall risk based on clinical judgment differs with physical therapists’ experience by examination of video clips of the Timed “Up& Go” Test performance of elderly people. [Subjects and Methods] The participants were divided into five groups according to the duration of their clinical experience: 32 in the student group, 46 in the 1–2 years group, 34 in the 3–4 years group, 43 in the 5–9 years group, and 15 in the 10 years or more group. The participants were asked to watch videos and assess the fall risk on a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). The agreement rate with fall risk categories characterized for this study and the VAS scores of each group were compared. [Results] The agreement rates of the 1–2 years and 10 years or more groups of the high fall risk video clips were significantly higher than that of the student group. The 10 years or more group had the highest agreement rates of all the groups. [Conclusion] The results of the present study suggest that physical therapists with 10 years or more experience can accurately and clearly identify subjects with high fall risk from video clips.