Purpose

The purpose of the study was to determine the knowledge, attitude and practice of Physiotherapists towards health promotion in Ghana.

The objectives of the study were to determine the association between knowledge and attitude as well as the association between knowledge and practice of physiotherapists towards health promotion.

Relevance

Literature suggest that, health promotion is an important component of the health care delivery, as it has a profound role in improving the health of both supposedly healthy persons and individuals with impairments or those with various medical conditions. Its role in improving the health of such individuals depends not only in the knowledge of health promotion but also the attitude and practice thereof.

Participants

Ninety-one (91) out of the 121 physiotherapists registered with Ghana Physiotherapy Association who attended a General Meeting were recruited to take part in the study.

Methods

Questionnaires were given to physiotherapists recruited using a convenient sampling method and were retrieved the same day after completion. Participants who did not attend the meeting received their questionnaires via post or their personal e-mail addresses and were collected after two weeks using self–addressed envelopes provided by the investigators.

Analysis

The data were analysed using SPSS version 20. Descriptive statistics of frequency distributions, pie charts and percentages were used to represent the data obtained and Chi-square analysis was used to test forassociations at a significance level of p < 0.05.

Results

The highest response rate of 75 (82%) was from the age group 21-30 years. Of the 91 respondents, 43(47%) were males and 48 (53%) were females.Physiotherapists’ knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) were 72%, 84% and 87% respectively. The overall average KAP score was 81%.

The association between knowledge of physiotherapists and practice was significant with Pearson-chi-square (p-value as 0.013).The association between the physiotherapists’ knowledge towards health and attitude was not significant with Pearson-chi-square (p-value as 0.097).

Conclusion

Physiotherapists had desirable knowledge, attitude and practice towards health promotion in Ghana. Nevertheless there is still room for improvement in acquiring in-depth knowledge about health promotion principles.

Implication

Refresher courses should be organized for the physiotherapists to broaden their knowledge in health promotion in order to practice health promotion appropriately and also more studies should be conducted to provide an evidence based approach in health promotion among physiotherapists in Ghana.

Key words: health promotion, physiotherapist,

Ethical approval was sought and obtained from the Ethics and Protocol Review Committee of the School of Allied Health Sciences, College of Health Sciences, University of Ghana.