ArticleFrontiers in medicine2026
When medical training amplifies therapeutic nihilism: a cross-national study of healthcare professional attitudes toward stroke recovery in Central Africa.
Article in Frontiers in medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Intensity is not time: reframing dose prescription in post-stroke neurorehabilitation.Frontiers in rehabilitation sciences · 2026Article
- The pediatric Cogni-Famille protocol: family-mediated manual therapy achieves comparable outcomes at one-eighth cost in children with cerebral palsy-a franco-Cameroonian comparative study.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2026Article
- Therapeutic scarification, shadow pain, and integrative geriatric rehabilitation for chronic musculoskeletal pain in older adults in Cameroon: a prospective mixed-methods observational study.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2026Article
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5 authors.
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Abstract
Background: Healthcare professionals' beliefs about stroke recovery profoundly influence rehabilitation outcomes. While therapeutic pessimism has been documented in high-income countries, no study has quantified these attitudes in sub-Saharan Africa or examined their correlation with clinical practice patterns. Objective: To quantify therapeutic pessimism among Central African healthcare professionals using a validated assessment instrument and examine its relationship with rehabilitation intensity preferences and treatment discontinuation patterns. Methods: Cross-sectional survey of 776 participants across six Central African countries: physiotherapy students ( Results: Medical students demonstrated severe therapeutic nihilism (mean RNI = 78.3 ± 12.4) with only 10% expecting lifelong recovery potential, contrasting sharply with stroke families (mean RNI = 31.2 ± 18.7, 40% expecting lifelong recovery, Conclusion: Central African healthcare professionals demonstrate systematic therapeutic pessimism substantially exceeding documented rates in high-income settings. The RNI provides the first validated quantitative framework for measuring these attitudes. Medical education paradoxically amplifies therapeutic nihilism, creating barriers to evidence-based intensive rehabilitation. These findings establish baseline data essential for targeted curriculum reform and suggest that professional pessimism may constitute a modifiable determinant of stroke outcomes.
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