Author: Eugene Barsky

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How To - Technicalities Main Physiotherapy and Web 2.0 Quick Tips

PhysioSearch is alive! Using Google interface :)

PhysioSearch is alive!

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All some of you may have noticed our earlier version of the physiotherapy search engine is not with us any more.

I admit that I sinned – I switched to Google. I created a new version of a search engine for high quality physiotherapy information using Google customized search engine (Google Co-op).

How to search it?
The PhysioSearch is searchable from this blog. Just type your search terms in the search box found on the right upper part of the screen and a new window will open up with your search results which you would be able to narrow down by clicking on the labels on the upper part of your screen. Good luck – let me know how it works for you. It is also searchable from here – http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=009072055596341291981%3A7ldb1tpbl-w

Why I did it? Why switching from the previous Rollyo engine using Yahoo indexes?

Well, four (4) reasons mainly: 1) No ads – by using Google I eliminate all unwanted advertising that clutter our web results, so we don’t have any ads at all right now!; 2) Easier interface – many people are used to Google layout – so why not using it; 3) Number of sites indexed – with Rollyo tool I could use only 25 sites , with Google I am unlimited to use as much site as I want; and finally 4) Narrowing the results – with Google tool I can narrow the results by simply labelling them, so if you want Canadian content – sure , just click on the Canadian content link and there you go!

What’s included? The following sites were included in the current version of the search engine:

1. 129.78.28.173 – PEDro database – not working yet, I am working with PEDro to resolve this problem
2. www.ptjournal.org – Founded in 1921, Physical Therapy is the official publication of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) and is an international, scholarly, peer-reviewed journal
3. www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus – MEDLINE Plus. MedlinePlus will direct you to information to help answer health questions. MedlinePlus brings together authoritative information from NLM, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other government agencies and health-related organizations.
4. www.canadian-health-network.ca – Canadian Health Network – The Canadian Health Network (CHN) is a national, bilingual health promotion program found on the Web at www.canadian-health-network.ca. The CHN’s goal is to help Canadians find the information they’re looking for on how to stay healthy and prevent disease.
5. www.csp.org.uk –The U.K. Chartered Society of Physiotherapy is the professional, educational and trade union body for the country’s 47,000 chartered physiotherapists, physiotherapy students and assistants.
6. www.hc-sc.gc.ca – Health Canada. Health Canada is the Federal department responsible for helping Canadians maintain and improve their health, while respecting individual choices and circumstances.
7. http://apa.advsol.com.au – Australian Physiotherapy Association. The Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA) is the peak body representing the interests of Australian physiotherapists and their patients. The APA is a national organisation with non-autonomous state and territory branches and specialty subgroups
8. www.physiotherapy.ca – Canadian Physiotherapy Association. CPA is the national professional association representing almost 10,000 members distributed throughout all provinces and territories.
9. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez – PubMed
10. www.opa.on.ca – Ontario Physiotherapy Association
11. www.physiosa.org.za – South African Society of Physiotherapy
12. www.rehab.queensu.ca – School of Rehabilitation Therapy, Queen’s University
13. www.omni.ac.uk/subject-listing/WB460.html – U.K. OMNI gateway
14. www.bcphysio.org – PABC
15. www.cirrie.buffalo.edu – Center for International Rehabilitation Research Information and Exchange – University of Buffalo
16. www.phac-aspc.gc.ca – Public Health Agency of Canada
17. www.ubc.ca – UBC
18. www.utoronto.ca – UofT
19. www.guidelines.gov – U.S. National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC), a public resource for evidence-based clinical practice guidelines.
20. bmj.bmjjournals.com – Venerable BMJ journal from UK
21. www.otseeker.com – OTseeker is a database that contains abstracts of systematic reviews and randomised controlled trials relevant to occupational therapy
22. www.cma.ca – Canadian Medical Association site
23. www.healthportal.gc.ca – The Canada Health Portal (CHP) is an internet site that provides Canadians with an authoritative and integrated view of health information and services from various government jurisdictions and organizations across Canada.
24. www.gov.bc.ca – All BC provincial government sites

More sites would be added after some evaluation process. Please do keep recommending sites!

Categories
Main Research

Effectiveness of community physiotherapy and enhanced pharmacy review for knee pain in people aged over 55 presenting to primary care: pragmatic randomised trial.

Here is a very recent – Oct. 2006 study published in the highly respected BMJ – BMJ. 2006 Oct 20; [Epub ahead of print]

This study authors from Primary Care Musculoskeletal Research Centre, Keele University, worked to evaluate the effectiveness of two primary care strategies for delivering evidence based care to people aged 55 or over with knee pain: enhanced pharmacy review and community physiotherapy.

The intervention for almost 300 patients was as following: Enhanced pharmacy review (pharmacological management in accordance with an algorithm); community physiotherapy (advice about activity and pacing and an individualised exercise programme); control (advice leaflet reinforced by telephone call).

The outcome measure was : Change in Western Ontario and McMaster Universities osteoarthritis index (WOMAC) at 3, 6, and 12 months.

Some results: Compared with control, mean differences in change scores for physiotherapy were 1.15 (95% confidence interval 0.2 to 2.1) for pain and 3.99 (1.2 to 6.8) for function; those for pharmacy were 1.18 (0.3 to 2.1) for pain and 1.80 (-0.8 to 4.5) for function. However, these differences were not sustained to six or 12 months.

Moreover, significantly fewer participants in the physiotherapy group reported consulting their general practitioner for knee pain in the follow-up period, and use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs was lower in the physiotherapy and pharmacy groups than in the control group.

The authors concluded that:” Evidence based care for older adults with knee pain, delivered by primary care physiotherapists and pharmacists, resulted in short term improvements in health outcomes, reduced use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and high patient satisfaction. Physiotherapy seemed to produce a shift in consultation behaviour away from the traditional general practitioner led model of care.”

The free full text for this article is available via BMJ here.

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Audiocasts / Podcasts Main Physiotherapy and Web 2.0 Workshops

More Physio Podcasts – How to Make the Most of your Therapy: Putting Research into Practice!

podcasts

Starting with the next week, the BC Rehabilitation Sciences Research Network (BC RSRnet) is running a series of 6 workshops on How to Make the Most of your Therapy: Putting Research into Practice!

We , at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at UBC are going to support the project by recording the seminars and providing those to all rehab practicing professional for free on the Web via podcasts, together with the speakers’ presentation. As usual, the podcasts would be available on this blog (under Podcasts category) and on the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre website.

For the record, the BC Rehabilitation Sciences Research Network (BC RSRnet) is a volunteer organization of occupational and physical therapists in British Columbia with a mission to generate new knowledge through rehabilitation science research that enables people with varying abilities to participate fully in life. The group’s focus for 2006/7 is knowledge translation: facilitating OT’s and PT’s to put research into practice.

The group has prepared a series of workshops on how to access (Step 1), appraise (Step 2), and apply (Step 3) research evidence in clinical settings.

Here is how their workshops would look like:

1. Nov 9, 2006 – Introduction to BC RSRnet and Evidence- Based Practice. How do I get the best information quickly? Step 1: How to ask the question and quickly access the most relevant literature
Presenters:
Alison Hoens (Clinical Assistant Prof, UBC; Clinical Coordinator, PHC Physiotherapy) and Charlotte Beck (UBC Librarian)

2. Dec 14, 2006 – How do I know the article is any good? Step 2: How to appraise the literature (Quantitative articles – theory session).
Presenters:
Alison Hoens (Clinical Assistant Prof, UBC; Clinical Coordinator, PHC Physiotherapy)
Additional presenter – TBA

3. Jan 11, 2007 – How do I know the article is any good? Step 2: How to appraise the literature (Quantitative articles – practical session).
Presenters:
Alison Hoens (Clinical Assistant Prof, UBC; Clinical Coordinator, PHC Physiotherapy) and
Sandy Leznoff (Clinical Instructor, UBC, Clinical Coordinator, PHC Occupational Therapy)

4. Feb 8, 2007 – How do I know the research is any good? Step 2: How to appraise the literature (Qualitative articles – theory session).
Presenters:
Wendy Hall (Associate Professor, Nursing, UBC)

5. Mar 8, 2007- How do I know the article is any good? Step 2: How to appraise the literature (Qualitative articles – practical session).
Presenters:
TBA

6. Apr 12, 2007 – How do I apply research evidence in my clinical setting? Step 3: How to best integrate research evidence into practice.
Presenters:
Lori Roxborough (Associate Director, Therapy Department, Sunny Hill Health Centre for Children & Clinical Associate Professor UBC SRS) and
Linda Li (Assistant Professor, UBC SRS, Division of Physical Therapy)

The workshops are running in Vancouver, BC on the second Thursday of each month (November 2006 through April 2007) from 1:30 – 4:30 in St. Paul’s Hospital downtown.

Here is the workshops outline and the registration form.

Stay tuned for the podcasts of those seminars very soon!!

Categories
Main Workshops

Librarian Seminar in Victoria, Vancouver Island – October 28, 2006

empire hotel victoria bc

Tomorrow, I am going to spend the noon hours with some fifty of the island physios in the University of Victora (UVic) library computer lab – Room 130 (that’s their classroom on the main floor of McPherson Library , near reference desk)

What is going to be covered? Here is an outline:

1. “Mastering Google for Physiotherapists”. During this hour we will learn to use free general search engines Google to locate reliable health / medical physiotherapy information, moreover I would also cover the fun things you can do with your search engine and also future directions in search. The workshop is outlined here [PDF, 1MB]

2. “Mastering PubMed for Physiotherapists”. During this hour we will learn to use PubMed (U.S. National Library of Medicine – world largest biomedical database) to find EBP research in physiotherapy. The workshop content is outlined here
[PDF, 600KB]

I am looking forward seeing many of you tomorrow – hope it will stop raining 🙂

Categories
Main Websites worth a click

Canadian Health Network

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The Canadian Health Network (CHN) is a national, bilingual health promotion program.

The mission of the Canadian Health Network is to promote healthy choices for Canadians. The CHN offers trustworthy information on health promotion and disease and injury prevention through a vast network of expert organizations. This network of health information providers includes the Public Health Agency of Canada , Health Canada and national and provincial/territorial non-profit organizations, as well as universities, hospitals, libraries and community organizations.

The CHN website includes links to more than 20,000 English and French Canadian web-based resources and provides in-depth information on 25 key health topics and population groups. The CHN also offers many search choices to explore its large collection of Canadian and international health resources.

This is an excellent web resource for consumer health information, however, I have to admit that personally I prefer the outstanding MEDLINEPlus by the U.S. National Library of Medicine – well those folks have MUCH more money invested in health research than we even dream here in Canada 🙁

Categories
Main Presentations Workshops

Wiking in your library: a practical overview

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Today, I did a presentation for the Vancouver Association of Law Libraries (VALL) folks in Vancouver.

We discussed the use of Wikis in the libraries. I uploaded the PDF version of the presentation here.

I included different examples of Wikis use in the libraries and private companies, and in a nutshell, my verdict was:

1. Wiki is an excellent tool for internal projects collaboration, internal brainstorming and ideas sharing
2. For external projects try an online social software
3. Wiki is questionable for legal research, however might be of use to find unusual or anecdotal information

Categories
Main Research

Mobilisation with movement and exercise, corticosteroid injection, or wait and see for tennis elbow: randomised trial.

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Here is an interesting study published in the venerable BMJ, in the very recent Sep 29; 2006 issue. This study objectives were to investigate the efficacy of physiotherapy compared with a wait and see approach or corticosteroid injections over 52 weeks in tennis elbow.

They worked with almost 200 patients and introduced eight sessions of physiotherapy; corticosteroid injections; or wait and see. They measured: global improvement, grip force, and assessor’s rating of severity measured at baseline, six weeks, and 52 weeks.

Results: “Corticosteroid injection showed significantly better effects at six weeks but with high recurrence rates thereafter (47/65 of successes subsequently regressed) and significantly poorer outcomes in the long term compared with physiotherapy. Physiotherapy was superior to wait and see in the short term; no difference was seen at 52 weeks, when most participants in both groups reported a successful outcome. Participants who had physiotherapy sought less additional treatment, such as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, than did participants who had wait and see or injections.”

The Australian authors from the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Queensland, concluded that: “Physiotherapy combining elbow manipulation and exercise has a superior benefit to wait and see in the first six weeks and to corticosteroid injections after six weeks, providing a reasonable alternative to injections in the mid to long term. The significant short term benefits of corticosteroid injection are paradoxically reversed after six weeks, with high recurrence rates, implying that this treatment should be used with caution in the management of tennis elbow.”

You can read the free full text for this article here

Categories
Audiocasts / Podcasts Main Physiotherapy and Web 2.0 Presentations

UBC Master of Physical Therapy graduating students’ systematic reviews – Podcasts

podcasting dog

For the first time in UBC Rehab School, the graduating class of Master of Physical Therapy students has compiled systematic reviews of literature on eight (8) different topics in physiotherapy.

On Sep. 14-15, 2006, those systematic reviews were presented in Vancouver, BC for a wide audience of physiotherapists.

We, at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at UBC, have recorded those as audio files and now are ready to share them with you. This is a collaboration mini-project with the Physiotherapy Association of British Columbia and The School of Rehabilitation Sciences , UBC and the UBC Library

Here, you will find all eight presentations (both PDF versions of the presentations themselves and audio files in mp3 format of their talks). Here is an alternative location– http://tinyurl.com/pzdqd

As far as I know, those are among the first podcasts in physiotherapy!

Categories
Main Websites worth a click

Canada’s Physical Activity Web Site

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Canada’s Physical Activity Web Site – http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/pau-uap/paguide/

This site is a part of the larger Public Health Agency of Canada site, and includes a number of one-page, easy-to-read pamphlets about physical activities that can help your patients to have more energy, move more easily, and get stronger. The information from the handbook is freely posted on the site, moreover you can order FREE hard copies of the Guide itself, or the Handbook with the Guide pull-out here.

Categories
Main Workshops

Librarian Workshops on Vancouver Island – Sep. 29-30, 2006

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Tomorrow, Sep. 29th we are going to have our librarian seminar running in Courtenay, Vancouver Island from 6 to 9pm in North Island College – Comox Campus on Ryan Road, 2300 Ryan Road Comox, Tyee Hall (multicoloured building), Room 114.

The next morning, Sep. 30th, we are going to repeat this seminar in Nanaimo– Central Vancouver Island from 11 to 2pm, where thanks to Teresa Prior, the Vancouver Island Health Authority medical librarian we have a computer lab in the Nanaimo Regional General Hospital – Room B-015 Computer Training Room (Basement, NRGH).

What is going to be covered? Here is an outline:

1. “Mastering Google for Physiotherapists”. During this hour we will learn to use free general search engines Google to locate reliable health / medical physiotherapy information, moreover I would also cover the fun things you can do with your search engine and also future directions in search. The workshop is outlined here [PDF, 1MB]

2. “Mastering PubMed for Physiotherapists”. During this hour we will learn to use PubMed (U.S. National Library of Medicine – world largest biomedical database) to find EBP research in physiotherapy. The workshop content is outlined here
[PDF, 600KB]

I am looking forward seeing some forty of you on the island in those two days!!

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