Reliability of hand held Doppler use in podiatrists

Methods This was a multi-centre inter-tester and intra-tester reliability study. Four podiatrists participated in this study, two public and two private practitioners. Three aspects of Doppler use were examined; the clinical Doppler technique, the evaluation of Doppler audio sounds and qualitative evaluation of Doppler waveforms. Participants meeting current guidelines for vascular screening attended two testing sessions, one week apart at either the private practice (N=32), or the public practice (N=31). Two podiatrists (either public or private) assessed their Doppler waveforms, and rated them as mono-phasic or multi-phasic. Podiatrists were also then required to analyse 30 waveform tracings chosen at random by the researchers, and 30 audio recordings of Doppler sounds recorded by the researchers. Cohen's Kappa (K) statistics were used to calculate inter and intra tester reliability using SPSS version 19.