Does online professional development for physiotherapists enhance clinical practice and patient outcomes? A mixed methods evaluation.

Not Applicable

• Conditions: back pain; neck pain; Musculoskeletal - Other muscular and skeletal disorders; Public Health - Health service research

• Registration Number: ACTRN12622000123741
• Lead Sponsor: Western Sydney University

Brief Summary

Not available

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Results First Posted: 1900-01-01
• Study Start: 2022-01-25
• Last Update Posted: 31 January 2022

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: ot yet recruiting
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 458

Inclusion Criteria

Physiotherapist learner participants:

To be eligible for this project, physiotherapist learner participants will be physiotherapists with full Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency registration and working in the private practice. They will have no more than 5 years of experience working as a physiotherapist. They will have a caseload of at least 3 new patients with spinal pain per week. Participants will be planning to continue to practice as a physiotherapist with this caseload for at least 6 months following participation in the online professional development intervention of the study.

Patient participants
Patients of the participating physiotherapists will be recruited to evaluate outcomes. To be eligible, patients will have spine pain (+/- limb pain) in any area of the spine, which is of any duration. They will attend the physiotherapy practice to receive care from the participating physiotherapist. They will be seeing the physiotherapist learner for the first time due to this episode of spinal pain.

Additional patients of the participating physiotherapists will be recruited for a patient-physiotherapist leaner encounter video recording. This is to ensure that these participants willingly provide consent to the use of the recording and collection of their demographic information. These patients will have the same inclusion criteria as those recruited for outcomes, except they will not need to be seeing the physiotherapist learner for the first time. Written consent will be obtained for participation.

Exclusion Criteria

Physiotherapist learner participants:
Physiotherapists learners will excluded if they have previously completed or are currently enrolled in a post-graduate musculoskeletal or sports physiotherapy program which includes mentored clinical practice hours. Physiotherapist learners will also be excluded if they have been working as physiotherapists for more than 5 years,

Patient participants
Patients will be excluded if they have a suspected or confirmed diagnosis which would contra-indicate physiotherapy management and require onward medical referral, as per usual physiotherapy practice. Such diagnoses are unable to be exhaustive, but include serious pathology such as spinal fractures, aortic aneurysm or cancer. Patients will also be excluded where English language proficiency or cognitive function limits ability to consent and/or complete the patient questionnaires.

Patients will be excluded from evaluating outcomes if they have been seen by the physiotherapist learner for the same episode of spinal pain in the previous month.

Study & Design

• Study Type: Interventional
• Study Design: Not specified

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Efficacy of patient treatment under the physiotherapist learners will be evaluated using the Patient-Specific Functional Scale.'[The outcomes of patients under the care of the physiotherapist learners will be evaluated after the professional development interventions. Consecutive eligible patients with spinal pain under the care of the learner physiotherapist will be evaluated with the outcome measure at initial appointment and four weeks after the initial appointment. ]