Integrating Research into Practice
Texas Physical Therapy Specialists(TexPTS) Approach to Evidence-Based Practice
Dear Physician or Referring Provider:
 Evidence Based Medicine or Evidence Based Practice (EBP) is increasingly relied upon in this era of medical cost-cutting as the standard for clinical practice. 1 Evidence Based Practice is defined as the "conscientious, judicious, and explicit use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients". At its highest level, current best evidence for treatment consists of randomized clinical trials and systematic reviews of those trials published in peer-reviewed journals. 2
Although EBP is increasingly turned to as the standard for the medical community, keeping-up and incorporating current best evidence has likewise become increasingly difficult for a clinician already being run ragged in a busy practice. For example, every few years the medical literature at least doubles in size 3 and only 10% of articles published in core medical journals are both high quality and clinically relevant. 4 Needless to say, staying abreast of developments in one's own area of interest appears to be extremely difficult if not impossible, much less the field of rehabilitation.
TexPTS is pleased to present you with TexPTS PIER, a series of research summaries designed to help you keep abreast of the current best evidence with regard to physical therapy intervention for patients with musculoskeletal disorders.
TexPTS PIER represents a recognized EBP tool (preprocessed evidence) that is presented in a concise, fun and user friendly format to help keep you stay up-to-date with the current best evidence in rehabilitation science and provide you with information for decision making.
For a given P roblem (eg. Low-back pain), I nterventions are identified based on E vidence related to that problem along with categorizing which patients would benefit from R eferral. This is done in an information dense, bulleted format that can be read in less than 2 minutes along with more detailed information attachment for those with further interest. Each TexPTS PIER summary is written by myself and John Childs. Both of us hold a Ph.D. in Rehabilitation Science from the University of Pittsburgh and have extensive clinical research publication records, which include leading medical journals such as Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Spine , and Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation to name a few.
We at TexPTS look forward to serving you and your patients by providing evidence-based physical therapy services and collaborating closely with our referring providers. Please let us know how we can be of assistance. More information can be found on our web-site at www.texpts.com
Sincerely,
Robert S. Wainner, PT, PhD, OCS, ECS, FAAOMPT
Andrew C. Bennett , DPT, OCS, FAAOMPT
Texas Physical Therapy Specialists
1. Simel DL, Dujardin B. The clinical examination: An agenda to make it more rational. JAMA 1997; 277:572-574.
2. Guyatt GH, Rennie D. Users' Guides to the Medical Literature: Essentials in Evidenced Based Clinical Practice.: JAMA, 2001.
3. Durack DT. The weight of medical knowledge. N Engl J Med 1978;
298:773-775.
4. Sackett DL, Straus SE, Richardson WS, Rosenberg W, Haynes RB. Evidence-Based Medicine: How to Practice and Teach EBM. London: Churchhill Livingstone, 2000.
|
|
