StudentPT: Two Old Articles

I was saving these in my e-mail and would like to share them with you lovely people...

The first is the APTA's testimony to the Medicaid commision on the benefits of PT. The second is an abstract from pubmed.gov of a study regarding Evidence Based Practice which is a key ingredient to what we as a profession want to accomplish. Enjoy.

Medicaid Commission Meets, APTA Testifies

Toby Long, PT, PhD, testified this week on the importance of access and coverage for physical therapist services at a meeting of the Medicaid Commission. Currently, physical therapy is classified as an "optional" rather than "mandatory" service. With states looking to save money in the program, APTA's testimony expressed concerns that "optional" services such as physical therapy may be excluded from coverage. APTA warned that excluding these services could lead to increased costs in institutionalized care, development of more severe health outcomes, or increased visits to hospitals.

Other APTA recommendations to the commission included standardizing documentation, improving access to durable medical equipment, and focusing on long-term care. The commission will report to Congress with recommendations for reforming the federal-state program.

Evidence based practice: a survey of physiotherapists' current practice.

School of Physiotherapy, La Trobe University, Australia. r.iles@latrobe.edu.au

BACKGOUND AND PURPOSE: Evidence-based practice is the explicit use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients and is a concept of growing importance for physiotherapy. The aim of the present study was to investigate Australian physiotherapists' self-reported practice, skills and knowledge of evidence-based practice and to examine differences between recent and experienced graduates, physiotherapists with low and high levels of training and physiotherapists working in private practice and hospital settings. METHOD: A survey was sent to 230 physiotherapists working in hospitals and in private practice. One hundred and twenty-four were completed and returned. RESULTS: Although 69.4% of respondents said they frequently (at least monthly) read research literature, only 10.6%, 15.3% and 26.6% of respondents, respectively, searched PEDro, Cochrane and Medline or Cinahl databases frequently, and only 25.8% of respondents reported critically appraising research reports. Recent graduates rated their evidence-based practice skills more highly than more experienced graduates, but did not perform evidence-based practice tasks more often. Physiotherapists with higher levels of training rated their evidence-based practice skills more highly, were more likely to search databases and to understand a range of evidence-based practice terminology than those with lower levels of training. Private practice and hospital physiotherapists rated their evidence-based practice skills equally and performed most evidence-based practice activities with equal frequency. CONCLUSIONS: Respondents had a positive attitude toward evidence-based practice and the main barriers to evidence-based practice were time required to keep up to date, access to easily understandable summaries of evidence, journal access and lack of personal skills in searching and evaluating research evidence. Efforts to advance evidence-based practice in physiotherapy should focus on reducing these barriers.