TABLE 2.

Theme 1 – Role in good health and well-being – Part 1.

Category	Code	Quotation
HIV/AIDS	Promotion and prevention	‘Physios [sic] have multiple roles in people living with HIV … going into communities and teaching about the importance of endurance to ARTs, maintaining diet, exercise, talk about sexual behaviour’. (Exp 5)
	Exercise prescription	‘With HIV/AIDS, people have reduced exercise tolerance; they could benefit from health promotion, exercise, health counselling and testing services. That is definitely a role that physiotherapists play’. (Exp 3)
	Educate and empower	‘Physiotherapists are well suited to do health education with HIV patients to prevent the spread of the disease. Physiotherapists have a significant role in empowering these young people in the importance of their safety and being responsible for their behaviour’. (Exp 6)
	Palliative care	‘Physio [sic] is really important in the palliative care context and has been shown to improve quality of life in terminally ill and end of life care by optimising independent function’. (Exp 2) ‘Our role in palliative or end-stage HIV-patients is making the patient as comfortable as possible’. (Exp 5)
Tuberculosis	Screening and prevention	‘Quick tests like peak flow, and spirometry that can be done in clinics to identify lung pathology in patients’. (Exp 3) ‘There’s nothing stopping physios [sic] from going into communities and talking about TB’. (Exp 5) ‘Physios [sic] prevent complications of chronic disease’. (Exp 2)
Chronic diseases of lifestyle	Hypertension	‘Hypertension is one of the most common conditions seen in primary health care; we educate them on the consequences of high blood pressure’. (Exp 1) ‘Physios [sic] optimise general health, for example, smoking cessation policies’. (Exp 2) ‘We are already involved in primary healthcare clinics with exercise programmes to minimise the effects of chronic diseases of lifestyle’. (Exp 7) ‘We play a preventative role in the adolescent population at risk for high blood pressure’. (Exp 4)
	Diabetes	‘Diabetes is a burden in South Africa. Physios [sic] are involved in the prevention in developing programmes on eating healthy, regular exercise and speaking to children and schools about the importance of exercise’. (Exp 5) ‘Our role is to educate diabetic patients at clinics, about diabetes and how exercise can assist in alleviating some of the symptoms’. (Exp 1)
	Obesity	‘Remember our duty is to fight obesity, and who better placed to fight obesity than a physiotherapist. Obesity is a risk factor for all chronic diseases: hypertension, diabetes, hypercholesteremia. We play a significant role in ensuring that our children are eating healthy so that they do not progress to being obese’. (Exp 6) ‘In schools, we do fitness testing, as markers of disease or risk factors for NCDs. In adolescents we know poor physical fitness is a predictor of future non-communicable diseases’. (Exp 3)

NCD, non-communicable disease; ART, anti-retroviral therapy.