We invite you to become involved in one of our student projects…
Within our first year we have already run three very successful student projects within Physiopedia amongst the international physiotherapy and physical therapy community. EIM Residents completed an assignment to each make two pages in Physiopedia as part of the capstone course in their residency training; Eric Robertson’s DPT students at the Medical college of Georgia completed a new set of pages as part of their spinal course; and Aileen Barrett’s students at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland created new pages for Apley’s Test and Auscultation as part of an elective module in their foundation year.
We are now looking for new partnering institutions and their physiotherapy/physical therapy students to join us in other exciting projects within Physiopedia. We have lots of ideas and are here to provide full support in planning and undertaking the projects. We are also very keen to complete some educational research in relation to these innovative projects and would like to see the results published and disseminated internationally. These are some of the ideas for projects that we have :
Creating a structure for the various clinical areas within Physiopedia.
Those involved would choose a clinical area and create a workable structure for the contents of this section to be built within Physiopedia. Clinical areas to choose from include: Neurology, Paediatrics, Sports Medicine, Rheumatology, Elderly Care, Endocrine/Metabolic, Pain Science, Womens Helath, Oncology, Health Promotion. This project would be suitable for a group of undergraduate students who could either work collaboratively on one topic together or work as individuals/pairs on a specific clinical area covering a number of clinical areas between the group.
A collaborative project between international students.
We would like to run a project within Physiopedia that is a collaborative venture between institutions in different countries. This project would be suitable for matched undergraduate or postgraduate students where the actual task would be created to suit their level of education. The task could be as simple as creating pages, creating structures for clinical areas (as mentioned above), case stidies or research reviews or could be complex and involve peer review situations. We are actively seeking institutions that would be keen to be involved in this project and have some great ideas for this project so will assist in all the planning, collaboration and support.
Educational research within Physiopedia.
We are currently looking for institutions to become involved in educational research within Physiopedia. We aim to academically assess student experiences of completing projects within Physiopedia and then publish and disseminate the results internationally. We have plenty of ideas for projects but need institutions to provide us with their students and support to complete these projects!
If you would like to get involved with any of the above projects or have another idea of your own don’t hesitate to get in touch with me directly to Rachael Lowe by email.
EIM Capstone Course Assignment
EIM run an Orthopaedic Physical Therapy Residency program which is a planned program of post-professional clinical and didactic education for physical therapists designed to advance the physical therapist resident’s preparation as a provider of patient care services in orthopaedic physical therapy. the 2009 EIM Residents recently completed an assignment which involved making pages in Physiopedia as part of the capstone course in their residency training. They created some great pages and really helped us to increase the content within Physiopedia, so thanks to all those involved including Eric Robertson who co-ordinated the project.
100 article milestone broken!
This rolling stone hasn’t had a chance to gather any moss recently! We are delighted to announce that we now have over 100 great articles full of content. Mainly in the musculoskeletal field and with special thanks to the efforts of the students at the Mediacl College of Georgia and Evidence in Motion our content is rapidly growing.
The educational projects that have taken place in Physiopedia have so far been a great success, and initial feedback from the students and tutors has been resoundingly positive. We hope that other institutions will be encouraged by the success of these projects and join us in this global collaborative effort. It’s not all about educational institutions though, there are many other opportunities to be involved either as an individual or as a health care organisation. For individuals writing, reviewing and updating pages in Physiopedia is a great continuing education and professional development activity, and for physiotherapy and physical therapy departments and clinics Physiopedia is an innovative tool for staff and service development projects, see our Health Organisations Guide for more information on this.
So join us, encourage others, spread the word, let’s keep that stone rolling!!
Join us in Facebook!
Physiopedia has been added to Facebook! We have created a group in Facebook where we hope to foster communication, discussion and networking among Physiopedia members and users. It is a great opportunity to discuss things related to Physiopedia such as article pages that have been created, reliability and validity of evidence used to support writing and ways to develop the whole project, for example. I have started two discussions today asking for help in structuring the Neurology and Paediatric sections which I am keen to get going. So join today and help us develop this global project in a collaborative way.
Looking for images to use?
Adding images to article pages in Physiopedia is a great idea! Not only do they make the page look nicer and help to engage the reader with the topic, they can also help to improve the readers understanding of the topic.
There are so many pictures out there on the web which we could use, but it is important in Physiopedia that we have permission to copy them before we use them. This is not often possible with pictures that are randomly found however there are a few good image libraries out there that have images that we can use. We recommend searching these libraries for images to decorate your page:
- Wikimedia Commons – A database of freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute. They have some good anatomy images including the full collection from Grays.
- Welcome Images – The Biomedical Collection holds over 40 000 high-quality images from the clinical and biomedical sciences. Selected from the UK’s leading teaching hospitals and research institutions, it covers disease, surgery, general healthcare, sciences from genetics to neuroscience including the full range of imaging techniques.
Both of these image libraries release most of their images under the Creative Commons Licence which allows users to copy, distribute and display the freely downloadable version of the image under the terms of this licence. It is important that when you upload an image from either of these sources to Physiopedia that you always add an attribution to the provider in the summary box. When a reader then clicks on an image in Physiopedia they will be taken to a specific Physiopedia page for that image where the attribution can be seen. For added attribution you could also reference it on the page in Physiopedia that you add it to!
