The full study can be found here
Tell us more about yourself and the author team.
We are a team including physiotherapists, orthopaedic surgeons and sports psychologists. We all love our work, but most importantly, we have fun together and joke a lot. We meet and do non-working-related activities, which usually include eating pizza. We all have a great training interest and always notice who comes last in the training session (of those who dare to show up).
What is the story behind your study?
Well, there is some clinical bias in it: the physiotherapists in our teamwork in the same sports rehabilitation clinic, and we all think that patients not treated with an ACL reconstruction are difficult to guide in the rehabilitation. We simply needed a greater understanding of how they experience the treatment process.
In your own words, what did you find?
A whole lot of uncertainty.
What was the main challenge you faced in your study?
Conducting qualitative research comprises handling large text volumes. The main challenge when conducting this study was (for me) certainly related to the transcription and double check of all the written text. Listening to the interviews, while checking the text was transcribed correctly required a lot of frequent breaks and overall a lot of working hours.
If there is one take-home message from your study, what would that be?
We must be open and honest with our ACL patients who have not been treated with reconstruction regarding uncertainty and dare speak with them about that.