Margit Kooijman

MSU | 59 Methods We performed an explorative survey of a sample of owners of physiotherapy practices and MSU physiotherapists in the Netherlands. Design and participants Practice owners A random sample of 1000 owners of physiotherapy practices in the Netherlands, representative of age, gender, type of practice and degree of urbanicity were invited to participate to investigate the diffusion of MSU in physiotherapy practices by means of a questionnaire. They were recruited from the national register database for physical therapists of the Dutch Institute for Health Services Research (NIVEL). At the end of the questionnaire, they were asked to state the names and email addresses of MSU physiotherapists working in their practice, if any. MSU physiotherapists In a second questionnaire, these MSU physiotherapists were questioned on their opinion and experience with MSU. Since MSU is relatively new in physiotherapy settings, a random sample to recruit more participants did not seem appropriate. It was therefore decided to recruit additional MSU physiotherapists through snowball-sampling in the authors professional network and through requests on social media. According to the Dutch Medical Research Involving Human Subjects Act, this study did not require ethics approval. The study did follow the Declaration of Helsinki research ethics 14 . Data collection Practice owners The questionnaire for practice owners included questions on the characteristics of the practice and on reasons for offering or non-offering MSU. A group of researchers, pioneers in the field of MSU education and from research institute NIVEL, and MSU physiotherapists (n = 12) was asked to provide feedback on the scope and completeness of the questionnaire. Modifications were made and the final version was tested in another group (n = 4) to evaluate feasibility. The final digital questionnaire consisted of 18 open and close-ended questions and took approximately seven minutes to complete. A letter with online login to the questionnaire was sent to all participants by letter post. After two weeks, all non-responders received the questionnaire by post. After four weeks, all non-responders received a reminder by post.