Author: Eugene Barsky

A long and sensitive post this time…

This study – J Med Libr Assoc. 2007 January; 95(1): 64–69, done by physios and one librarian, worked to explore the use of information resources by a sample of physical therapists, by examination of professional libraries, and identification of information resources in three U.S. sites (Southern California, Arizona, and Georgia). Participants included forty physical therapists with between five and twenty years of experience.

The authors found that the Internet and continuing education activities appeared to be the primary information sources for the physical therapists surveyed. The personal professional libraries of participants were limited in scope and contained titles copyrighted more than ten years ago. Access to peer-reviewed journals in the sample was limited primarily to those received as a benefit of professional association membership – which in Canada is even more limiting!

Participants did not maintain current print professional information resources. The majority of books in the personal and workplace professional libraries held copyrights dating from the time of the participants’ enrollment in an entry-level physical therapy program.

The study says that medical librarians may play an important role in shifting physical therapy towards evidence-based practice by collaborating in professional development for this group.

This is exactly what we are trying to do here in our collaboration project between the University of British Columbia’s Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and the Physiotherapy Association of British Columbia.

It reminds me of a quite recent article – “Do physiotherapists’ attitudes towards evidence-based practice change as a result of an evidence-based educational programme?: – http://tinyurl.com/3by3ux , that concluded that : “In this study, physiotherapists appeared to be in favour of the idea of EBP, yet they remained reluctant to change their practice. Opinion leaders were not easily identifiable by physiotherapists, suggesting that this method alone may not be an effective method of changing attitudes in clinical practice…”

Personally, I would love so much to see physiotherapy professional organizations, like Canadian Physiotherapy Association, offering more access to professional, easy-to-use and accessible online resources, like electronic books (e.g. Review of Medical Physiology via StatsRef! or Macnab’s Backache via Books@OVID) and articles (full text editions of MEDLINE and CINAHL from EBSCO or OVID would do wonders with physiotherapists professional info needs!).

Moreover, how can the patients trust their health professionals whose information sources are ten years out-of-date?

Thanks for David Rothman for emailing me the link to the article, even before I opened my PubMed alert for this journal 🙂

Here is an interesting study, published in Nov. 2006 British Medical Journal – BMJ. 2006 Nov 18;333(7577):1041. Epub 2006 Oct 6.

The researchers wanted to assess whether a physical activity intervention reduces body mass index in young children – 545 children in their preschool year, mean age 4.2 years (SD 0.2) at baseline.

They used enhanced physical activity programme in nursery (three 30 minute sessions a week over 24 weeks) plus home based health education aimed at increasing physical activity through play and reducing sedentary behaviour; and measured body mass index, expressed as a standard deviation score relative to UK 1990 reference data. Secondary measures were objectively measured physical activity and sedentary behaviour; fundamental movement skills; and evaluation of the process.

The study found that: “Group allocation had no significant effect on the primary outcome measure at six and 12 months or on measures of physical activity and sedentary behaviour by accelerometry. Children in the intervention group had significantly higher performance in movement skills tests than control children at six month follow-up (P=0.0027; 95% confidence interval 0.3 to 1.3) after adjustment for sex and baseline performance.”

CONCLUSIONS: Physical activity can significantly improve motor skills but did not reduce body mass index in young children in this trial.

Here is the free full text in BMJ (PDF, 105KB).

A new issue of the Journal of Manual & Manipulative Therapy is out. As usual, it includes some free content -> http://jmmtonline.com/current/

Peter Huijbregts, the journal editor, says that this is a special topic issue on myofascial pain syndrome.

This is one of the interesting articles in that issue –“Physical Therapy Diagnosis and Management of a Patient with Chronic Daily Headache: A Case Report”

Here is a long – awaited study design. The Dutch group of researchers from Amsterdam are about to run a randomised controlled trial that aims to assess the added value of a lifestyle physical activity intervention in addition to a work style intervention to reduce neck and upper limb symptoms in computer workers.

Computer workers from seven Dutch companies with frequent or long-term neck and upper limb symptoms in the preceding six months and/or the last two weeks are randomised into three groups: (1) work style group, (2) work style and physical activity group, or (3) control group.

The work style intervention consists of six group meetings in a six month period that take place at the workplace, during work time, and under the supervision of a specially trained counsellor. The goal of this intervention is to stimulate workplace adjustment and to improve body posture, the number and quality of breaks and coping behaviour with regard to high work demands. In the combined (work style and physical activity) intervention the additional goal is to increase moderate to heavy physical activity. The control group receives usual care.

Primary outcome measures are degree of recovery, pain intensity, disability, number of days with neck and upper limb symptoms, and number of months without neck and upper limb symptoms. Outcome measures will be assessed at baseline and six and 12 months after randomisation. Cost-effectiveness of the group meetings will be assessed using an employer’s perspective.

The results of the study are expected in 2007. Alstublieft , we will wait 🙂 Here is the full text of their protocol in PDF format – 11 pages.