BACKGROUND: Home-based physical therapy is essential for optimizing the effectiveness and success of physiotherapy. Majority of patients report that they cannot exercise at home and there is a lack of adherence to home-based exercise program. Understanding factors that influence patients' adherence with home-based physical therapy might help practitioners support improved adherence. Therefore, the purpose of this review is to determine all relevant factors that could influence adherence to home-based exercise program. METHODS: A literature search was performed in CINAHL, Pubmed-MEDLINE and PEDro databases. The following search categories were used: 'physiotherapy', 'home-based exercises', 'home exercise program', 'home-based physical therapy', 'adherence', 'effectiveness', 'facilitators', and 'barriers'. A total of 612 studies were identified and title and abstract analysis was performed and 8 relevant studies were included for further analysis. RESULTS: The following factors were found to influence adherence to home-based exercise programs are: self-motivation, self-efficacy, locus of control, perceptions about physical therapy, their previous experience of an exercise program, participants' active role in the rehabilitation, psychological influences such as depression and anxiety, stress and coping strategies, social support, time constraints, physical environment. Even exercise prescription, patient-therapist communication and some cultural-specific factors such as opting for folk medicine over rehabilitation and social stigma were also found to influence adherence. CONCLUSION: Therapists should emphasize more on reported findings and incorporate them into management strategies to increase adherence to home-based exercise program. This study can lead to the development of effective interventions for promoting adherence to home-based exercise program. Keywords: Home-based exercises, home exercise program, home-based physical therapy, adherence, facilitators, and barriers.
Gohil et al. (Fri,) studied this question.