Evidence-based Practice: A Practice without Implementation? Current Insights in Rural Areas
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Abstract
Introduction: Evidence-based practice is a combination of evidence and its clinical application. Decision-making on the basis of evidence has been a challenge for therapists. In therefore, there is crucial to assess the inculcation of recent trends, techniques, and methods into clinical practice it is essential to determine knowledge and perception of evidence-based practice in physiotherapists working in rural settings.
Aim: This study aims to identify the barriers and setbacks perceived by physiotherapists, hence by further promoting and enhancing patient care quality by incorporating recent evidence into their practices. The study also focuses on improving clinical decision making thereby improving the quality of care.
Materials and Methods: A multicentric study was conducted including 15 clinical setups in rural areas, 200 physiotherapists (Average experience of 5 years, mean age:37.6 years, both genders) were approached and instructed to fill out a self-explanatory Likert-type questionnaire. It consisted of three domains, knowledge, attitude, and perception of evidence-based practice and its implementation. The content validity of the questionnaire was obtained. Questions focusing on barriers, challenges, and difficulties faced by rural therapists in incorporating evidence in their practice were addressed.
Results: In the knowledge domain,62% of therapists were aware that evidence-based practice improves patient care however, only 27% of therapists know the procedure of critical appraisal of research findings. Besides only 12% knew that it enhances the ability of clinical decision-making. This poor knowledge about evidence-based practice is also reflected in the attitude domain,10% of therapists felt that evidence-based practice is only for academic purposes, and of 20% felt that evidence has no reflection upon the health outcomes of patients. In the perception domain, 20% of therapist-patient were implementing evidence in their day-to-day practice whereas, 10% of therapists inferred that evidence is not useful for clinical decision-making.
Conclusion: This study concludes physiotherapists in rural clinical setups are fairly aware of evidence-based practice however, they are not implementing it in clinical decision-making, and as a prognostic indicator possible reason is a lack of research environment and research infrastructure. This study recommends there can be interview-based questions to understand the barriers in depth.
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References
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