Evidence Based Practice

Justify decision-making as primary care provider, considering contemporary evidence-based practice or best practice.

1. Telehealth In-service

2. Doctoral Research Project

While sometimes building on our ability to apply our knowledge to improving the life of an individual patient involves physical contact, more often the most powerful thing a Physical Therapist can do is listen and observe. That experience is not diminished but in fact enhanced in Telehealth through the true one on one exposure.

I created an informational flyer, explaining what telehealth is and what it is not, that was sent to each of the clinics and emailed out to patients.

I produced a chart to allow the therapist to write down gathered information in a more organized way to further make it easier to translate the collected patient data.

I generated a cheat sheet targeting the larger joints of the human body which included different ways to conduct an initial evaluation in laymen's terms in order for the patient to correctly and safely self perform.

Palpation

Range of Motion

Manual Muscle tests

Tests and Measures

I tested my cheat sheets on friends and family who knew nothing about the human body through zoom. After much research and many long difficult trial runs, I was able to design an accurate universal way to guide each individual through an exam via telehealth.

Access to telehealth has become of paramount importance in the last year to ensure the safety of patients and providers. It also helps providers deliver care sooner, potentially resulting in fewer procedures, shorter hospital stays and healthier outcomes, resulting in lower health costs.

The healthcare field is continuously changing everyday and as we have all just experienced, the future is unpredictable. Evidence-based practice is a problem solving approach to clinical practice that incorporates the best evidence from studies, patient values and clinical expertise. As a current SPT and future clinician, I will continue my education in regards to telehealth to improve patient experience, population health outcomes and decrease health costs.

Telehealth is rapidly growing and I find it pertinent that we continue to explore and contribute to the growth of Telehealth.

Doctoral Research Project

As an example of EBP, I will talk about the research my team and I worked on for two years.

" Observation of patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes in treatment of musculoskeletal conditions: a systematic review"

The purpose of this review was to determine if patient satisfaction is observed when patients reports clinical outcomes improved.

I was interested in this topic simply because of the word satisfaction. What does satisfaction mean? In this topic, patient satisfaction was defined based on their satisfaction with their results, not with their therapist. Previously success has been measured by improvements in impairments that are often measured by outcome measurement tools. More recently, professionals are trending towards patient centered care with an increased focus on the individual components of patient care that lead to success. This form of practice then moves the emphasis of an objective single impairment based plan of care to considering the patient as a whole person.

How will this help Physical Therapists?

The role of the physical therapist is to help their patients get better. Helping people get better can include using skills such as motivational interviewing, asking about patient goals, and determining their preferences to establish meaningful improvement.

Our research concluded that improved communication will help the Physical Therapist establish a plan of care that can lead to meaningful improvement. If you identify and understand patient expectations early, it can inform a more efficient plan of care in turn making care more effective. We only have so much time and so many resources, so how do we deliver the best plan of care?

If the expectations are identified, preferences and priorities are discussed during the initial evaluation, it can inform a more efficient plan of care there by improving both outcomes and satisfaction.