Title: Physiotherapy practice in women’s health: Awareness and attitudes of obstetricians and
gynecologists in Ghana
Version: 6 Date: 08 Sep 2022
Reviewer's report:
REVIEWER COMMENTS
Introduction
1. Provide citation for this statement (The issue of delayed involvement of physiotherapy by
most physicians has been of great concern to physiotherapists worldwide.)
2. What is known about the subject matter in Ghana in the context of research? What are the
gaps in Ghana’s existing studies. How does your study fill in the gaps in literature?
Methods
1. Delete ‘between’ (The study was cross sectional study conducted at the Department of
Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH), in Accra, Ghana
between )
2. (Specific exclusion criteria were failure to provide informed consent, house officers
undertaking their rotations at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and resident doctors
who had spent less than 12 months into their residency training. Also, doctors who were on leave
were excluded from the study.)………What was the rationale for this exclusion criteria
3. Where was the questionnaire used ?
4. Factors affecting utilization was not captured in your objectives
5. How many items measured attitudes and awareness?
6. Who administered the questionnaire ?
7. How much time was required to complete a questionnaire?
8. What were the validity and reliability of the questionnaire ?
Results
1. Replace ‘low’. Attitude cannot be either low or high. It can be either positive or negative
Replace ‘affecting’ with ‘associated’ (Factors affecting utilization of physiotherapy)
2. Replce ‘are’ with ‘were’ (Similarly, 6.6% (n=4) indicated that there are enough
physiotherapist to cover both obstetrics and gynecology wards)
3. What informed the selection of the items in Table 4? How valid and reliable are these items?
4. (There was important findings relating doctors categories and their awareness of the role
physiotherapy in obstetrics and gynecology (Table 5). )………………..‘there was important
findings’ …………………correct the grammatical error. What makes this finding important
when the association was not statistically significant? You need to comment on the statistical
significance of the association between doctor category and awareness.
5. (Years of practice for ten years or more was associated with 3.5 times increased
doctor’s awareness concerning the role of physiotherapy during childbirth (OR=3.560, 95%CI:
1.070-14.220) as shown in Table 6. )…………….. This is not how odd ratios are reported in
research papers, hence revise. What type of regression is in Table 6 ? How was the outcome or
dependent variable generated? What does the second column in Table 6 represent?  What does
* and NA in Table 2 represent? Your regression is unclear?  Why did you exclude participant
characteristics from the model? Where is the regression table for attitudes?
6. (years of practice and awareness)………… Why do you report this when it was not
significant?
Discussion
1. Weak discussion. The implications of the findings to policy, research and practice have not
been well discussed.
2. The organization is the work is poor. The authors have not been meticulous enough and have
not used the journal’s guidelines coupled with several language problems. The language has to
be edited by a professional proofreader or an experienced researcher.
3. (For instance, consultants demonstrated the highest (85.7%) awareness of the role of
physiotherapy in antenatal care and most gynecological conditions compared to s the residents
(78.8%).)……….. This finding is problematic. On what bases are you making this conclusion
when none of the associations was significant?
4. There are a number of these in the manuscript (Click or tap here to enter text.)
Reference
Some of the literatures are outdated.