INTRODUCTION: The field of home physical therapy care has expanded to realize the importance of the home context for the care of patients. In this setting, the physical therapist makes an evaluation and elaborates a care plan outlining a physical and functional diagnosis at the home level, which provides more comfort and mobility for the patient that can be restricted to bed or be incapable to move to seek care in specialized clinics. The home care approach demands of this professional the development of broader way of seeing a patient that understands the home context and the nuances of parental relationships to implement a methodology of care with the family, which transforms this setting in a potential space of care. Such approach, however, faces difficulties for its theoretical and practice fundamentalization, due to the lack of knowledge existent because of the shortage of publications about this issue in the most important databases, which makes difficult to proof the efficacy of this service. OBJECTIVES: The objective of this study is to publish the results found about the state of the art in the field of home physical therapy care. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study was based on an extensive literature review performed on the Capes Journals Portal, BIREME, MEDLINE, LILACS, SciELO and also on Google Scholar from the years of 1998 to 2008, using the following key words: family, home, home physical therapy, physical therapy, and home care. RESULTS: The preliminary results showed the need of more research in this area and the importance of studying the theme of home physical therapy care.
Home care; Family; Journal articles publications; Research; Physical therapy
