Study Information

Children who are born prematurely are at higher risk for developmental delay, and can benefit from direct physical therapy (PT) and/or occupational therapy (OT) intervention along with interventions from other team members, such as speech language pathologists, respiratory therapists and others. Children who need PT/OT intervention should be identified promptly and consistently, so services can be initiated timely. The current project aims to study the consistency of referral criteria for PT/OT in NICU patients, and whether there is a need for more unified guidelines. The study’s principal investigator is Alicia Fernandez-Fernandez, PT, DPT, PhD, Professor and PhD program director in the Physical Therapy department at Nova Southeastern University in Florida. If you have questions about the study, you may contact Dr. Fernandez-Fernandez at alicfern@nova.edu.

The survey will take no more than 15 minutes to complete, and will collect general information about the NICU where you practice, your profession, and referral guidelines for PT and/or OT in your NICU. Your participation is completely voluntary. No personally identifiable information will be collected unless you choose to provide it in a comment box, and your responses will be kept confidential. No risks or discomforts are anticipated from taking part in this study. If you quit at any time before you have finished the questionnaire, your answers will NOT be recorded.

By submitting this survey, you are agreeing to participate in this study so that your answers can be used by the investigators to explore referral policies for PT/OT in the NICU. The results of the study will be used for scholarly purposes only. This study has been approved by the Institutional Review Board at Nova Southeastern University (http://www.nova.edu/irb/).

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