Athlete Adherence to Rehabilitation: It Matters

Ukraine’s Dayana Yastremska receives medical attention during her semi-final match against China’s Qinwen Zheng REUTERS/Tracey Nearmy.

Clinicians struggle to find reasons why athletes fail to recover from their injuries despite there being no pathological reason for a poor outcome. They may be led to feel that their treatment program has not met the athlete’s needs, this being based purely on their physical presentation. However, clinicians must consider the athlete’s psychological and behavioral responses to their injury to understand treatment adherence.

The definition of adherence in physiotherapy is the extent to which the athletes undertake the clinic-based and home-based prescribed components of their physiotherapy program⁽¹⁾. Clinicians use adherence rather than compliance because it implies that the athlete has active voluntary involvement in the planning and implementation of the treatment (see figure 1). In contrast, compliance is abiding obediently by the practitioner’s prescribed treatment protocol⁽¹⁾. This would include the exercise prescription, activity modifications, and precautions in physiotherapy practice.