Fall Prevention in Multiple Sclerosis

Fall Prevention in Multiple Sclerosis

My capstone project was in collaboration with April Fay who created a handout on Managing the Symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis (MS).  The purpose of our project was to create an educational handout for neurologists about the benefits of physical therapy for patients with MS in terms of preventing falls and symptom management.  As a part of our scholarship program April and I have spent a lot of time observing with local neurologists and learning more about MS, however, we noticed that there was a lot of variability between neurologists in terms of physical therapy referral for patients with MS. In response to this we wanted to create an evidence based handout that could be used to educate neurologists on the role of physical therapy and the potential benefits of treatment for this particular population.  The focus of my handout was fall prevention interventions specifically for patients with MS, including vestibular interventions, lower extremity strengthening, and core strengthening.

Here is a copy of the entire handout: Capstone Handout

In order to distribute our handout we contacted the North Carolina Neurological Society who graciously provided us with a table at their Annual Conference this past February where we could distribute our handouts to local neurologists.  In order to determine the potential effect of our handout we asked neurologists to fill out a pre-survey prior to reading the handout.  Once they returned the pre-survey we provided them with the handout and post-survey that they could return at their leisure during the conference.

Here is a copy of the pre and post evaluation surveys: Evaluation Survey

We received 30 pre and post-surveys during the 2 day annual conference!  When neurologists returned their completed post-survey we asked if they were interested in additional information and our references.  We provided them with supplemental handouts either at the conference or by email the following week, depending on what they preferred.

Here is a copy of the entire supplemental handout: Capstone Supplemental Handout

The results of our data collection revealed that:

• 27/30 Neurologists would consider increasing the number of patients with MS they refer to physical therapy
• 23/30 Neurologists would consider increasing the number of patients with MS referred to physical therapy for fall prevention interventions
• 25/30 Neurologists would consider increasing the number of patients wit MS referred to physical therapy for symptom management
• New reasons neurologists would refer to physical therapy include: patient report of falls (8), fatigue management (16), heat sensitivity management (15), development of a wellness program (14) and spasticity management (12).
• 12/30 Neurologists requested additional information

In additon to the annual conference, April and I also submitted an abstract about our project to the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers Annual Conference that will be held in San Diego this coming June.  Our abstract was accepted and we are currently working on a poster presentation for the conference!

Here is a copy of our CMSC abstract: 2012 CMSC Abstract

Here is a copy of our CMSC poster: 2012 CMSC Poster

Additional Materials: Evidence Table (Vestibular Interventions for patients with MS): Evidence Table