Newsletter June 2010

Hello Physiopedia fans and welcome to our summer newsletter which brings you all the Physiopedia news and developments from the first half of 2010!

WE’VE GONE SOCIAL!

Physiopedia has finally had a social face lift. This is the first part of a scheme to make Physiopedia a social experience where our users will be able to connect with us and with each other. We have added icons to the top of the sidebar to enable you to quickly sign up for email alerts and RSS feeds and also to connect with us in Twitter and Facebook. At the top of each page on the right we have added a button that allows you to easily save the current page as a bookmark or to share it with your friends via various applications, including Facebook and Twitter. We are currently also looking into developing a social networking side to Physiopedia which will enable us to create clinical networks and interest groups, but in the mean time we hope you find these recent additions useful.

PUBLISH RESEARCH IN PHYSIOPEDIA

The open and collaborative nature of Physiopedia enables any registered user of physiopedia to edit pages and with this new feature to also publish their own research. This will allow physiotherapists and physical therapists, who otherwise might not have the opportunity, to publish their work for all to see. Once published in Physiopedia the research will be open for peer review by the Physiopedia community.

We are happy to publish your original research, summaries of research prior to publication in a peer reviewed journals or to publish your student dissertation. We welcome all types of research including randomised controlled trials, systematic reviews, meta-analyses and case studies This is a great way of publicising student work, supporting new researchers and bridging the gap between completing research and publication.

Read More…

BELLARMINE UNIVERSITY STUDENT PROJECT

Students from Bellarmine University have completed their recent project – Pathophysiology of Complex Patients Problems. I was thoroughly impressed with this ambitious project and am grateful to all those who were involved for their efforts and contributions to the site. The articles that the students created are of very high quality and it is obvious that they have all worked really hard. Now that the project is complete we will soon be opening up their articles and networking them into the main site content.

Take a look at this project…

JOINING FORCES WITH AGILE

The AGILE Project is a collaborative effort by members of AGILE, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy Clinical Interest Group of Physiotherapists working with Older People. Led by Bhanu Ramaswamy, those involved in the project will be working on creating a structured and evidence based Older People section of Physiopedia under the sub-headings: Policy, Physiology and Physiotherapy. The project eventually aims to involve IPTOP, the International Association of Physical Therapists working with Older People, and the wider international community.

Watch this page for further details!!

NEW DEVELOPMENTS

We are always looking for new ways to develop the Physiopedia resource that will be beneficial to individuals and to the profession. The ideas that we have and are mulling over include clinical networks, a CPD programme, a mentoring scheme, opportunities for in-service training and a journal club. However as a collaborative site we would like to include you, our users, in the development of this resource and these ideas, and invite you to contribute to Physiopedia’s future.

Read more about these ideas and contribute to Physiopedia’s future…

JOIN US IN BOSTON FOR PT2010

PT 2010, the Annual Conference and Exposition of APTA, is only a couple of weeks away now.  On Saturday 19th June Eric and I will be talking all about wikis and giving a guided tour and editing demonstration of Physiopedia.  Why don’t you come along to join in the fun!!

OR JOIN ME AT CSP CONGRESS

That’s all for now. Please stay in touch and we look forward to seeing or hearing from you in the near future!

Best wishes until next time,

I’ll also be presenting Physiopedia at CSP Congress again this year.  The focus will be on using Physiopedia in Education but anyone interested in finding out more about Physiopedia will find this session useful.  So if your around for that, I’ll see you there!!

That’s all for now. Please stay in touch and we look forward to seeing or hearing from you in the near future!

Best wishes until next time,

Rachael Lowe
Physiopedia Founder

Newsletter #3

Happy New Year from all of us at Physiopedia!!  Our third newsletter highlights statistics, activity and projects from Physiopedia in 2009, it’s first official year, and also indicates our ideas for development and what we plan to do in the coming 2010.  We hope that you enjoy reading and please forward this email onto others that you think may be interested to have a read.  Thanks!

Annual Report

Following the official launch of Physiopedia in January last year, 2009 has exceeded all of our expectations and the project has been well received with a great deal of interest from all over the world.  We have had over 300 author registrations from the physiotherapy and physical therapy commumity and built more than 200 articles with valued content.  There have been nearly 40,000 visitors from 152 countries who have viewed more than 162,000 pages!!!

Not only have individuals been working in Physiopedia as part of their continued education and professional development, we have also run four educational projects where students, both undergraduate and postgraduate, have been working on assignments in Physiopedia as part of their formal education.  This aspect of Physiopedia’s development has been the most innovative, drawing interest from educational professionals and institutions globally. With a truly international following Physiopedia has been referenced as a source of information in courses around the world, has been presented at an international physiotherapy conference and has also been published in a leading international physiotherapy journal.

We are looking forward to 2010 being another exciting year for Physiopedia.  In February we start our first international collaborative project where students from Ireland and South Africa will work together on the same assignment within Physiopedia.  As well we are planning to develop an open educational programme within Physiopedia where qualified physiotherapists and physical therapists can take part in free and collaborative professional development together.  We hope to continue to develop further innovative projects for Physiopedia, present our work at more international conferences and also publish reports in leading educational and physiotherapy journals.

Educational project report

At the end of 2009 the Evidence in Motion residents developed 56 pages in Physiopedia as part of an assignment for their Capstone course.  The work that these graduate students are producing in Physiopedia is a valuable contribution to the development of evidence based content within Physiopedia.

The plans for the first international collaborative project to take place within Physiopedia are well underway and the project, which is a collaborative effort between undergraduate students in ireland and South Africa, is due to start in February.  We are most excited about this innovative proejct and will be keeping you updated with it’s progress on the blog and on Twitter (using the #ISP1 tag).

If you are an educator and would like to use Physiopedia as a space where your students can complete individual work or class projects, whether formal or informal, please read our Educators Guide for more information or contact us directly.

Development report

We continue to do all we can to make the user experience of Physiopedia as rich and rewarding as possible.  This year we plan to be more dedicated to regularly updating the homepage with featured resources and contributors, will promote a monthly focus related to world affairs and will also continue to highlight any student or CPD projects that are ongoing. We will also be actively seeking more help with developing the site by creating specific voluntary roles:

• Clinical Directors – To help us specifically develop each clinical area we are looking for motivated experts from all specialities to become Clinical Directors.  Their role will be to guide us in populating each clinical area with appropriate pages, help us create expert evidence based content and also promote the site within the clinical area.  If you are interested in this role as a Clinical Director please do get in touch.

• Associate and national Directors – With such international interest we would also like to recruit volunteers to act as Physiopedia Directors in different areas of the world.  We are specifically looking for a representative from each continent and may also consider national representatives.  This will allow focused and localised promotion of the site and provide a local contact from which ever nation you reside.  If you are interested in either of these Associate Director or National Director roles, please do get in touch.

Your suggestions please

Physiopedia continues to develop as an innovative project for the global physiotherapy community, but it cannot succeed without your valued contributions.  Please help us to make positive progress with this project by letting us know what you think and providing us with ideas for future developments.  Please let us know your thoughts and ideas via the contact us page on the Physiopedia website.

Thank You!

We have constantly been overwhelmed by the activity that has taken place in Physiopedia and the support that we have had for the project.  We thank all of you who have become involved and contributed to the exciting development of this project, the worlds first open encyclopedia for the global physiotherapy community.  We could not have done it without you!

Rachael Lowe
Physiopedia Founder

Newsletter #2

Hello everyone and thank you for your continued support.  To all our newly registered users, welcome to Physiopedia, thank you for joining us and taking an interest in this global physiotherapy/physical therapy project.

Our biggest news recently is the start of the new Physiopedia Blog.  We thought it was about time to provide a place for people to read about developments and happenings at Physiopedia.  Initially we have imported all the previous posts that I have written about Physiopedia on my blog but from now on we will report on what is currently going on at Physiopedia.  Read more here…

This week we have added RSS feeds based on the title of the page to all Article pages that have content.  The feeds come direct from PubMed and will be updated every time new related research is added to PubMed.  A great way to keep up-to-date with very specific topics!

We are very grateful to EIM and Regis University for the recent addition of the Presentations resource.  This resource showcases high quality evidence-based lectures in an open-access environment. These are lectures that have been created, submitted through a peer-review process, and are now shared with Physiopedia. We will add more presentations as we receive them, so add this page to your watch list, or just keep checking back!

The recent RCSI student project in Physiopedia was a great success with very positive feedback from the students.  I am very excited to have been given the opportunity to present the feedback gathered from this project at CSP Congress in October in Liverpool, so if you are keen to hear more come and see me there!

We now have two new student projects running in Physiopedia.  Students from Eric Robertson’s spine course at the Medical College of Georgia will be creating new pages related to their studies and Evidence in Motion Residents will be completing an assignment and making pages in Physiopedia as part of the capstone course in their residency training.  I am very much looking forward to supporting these projects.

If you are an educator and would like to use Physiopedia as a space where your students can complete individual work or class projects please have a read of our Educator Guide for more information or contact me directly by email to discuss this opportunity.

The Physiopedia Blog has a category called Top Tips.  Here we will write short posts with hints and tips to help you when using Physiopedia.  So if you are wondering how to get started using Physiopedia have a look at our recent posts on getting started and also have a read of the post about increasing your profile.  I’ll try and keep these posting regular hints and tips but if you have any requests just let me know.

Your suggestions please

Physiopedia is still and a new and developing project we would very much welcome and encourage you to make suggestions on how we could improve Physiopedia.  Can we make it easier for you to contribute content in any way?  Are there any other pages/facilities/functions that you would like us to add?  Please let us know your thoughts and ideas.  You can do this via the contact us page or by making a comment below.

Newsletter #1

Welcome to Physiopedia

This is the first newsletter that will be received by our registered users of Physiopedia. We are still new and developing but thanks to the keen interest of the physio / physical therapy community we now have over 50 registered users of Physiopedia. As one of these users we hope that will use your editing rights and contribute to the content and development of Physiopedia. If we all just created one new page in our area of clinical interest, that would be over 50 new pages of valued content!

Getting started

If you are not quite sure where to start in Physiopedia, have a look at the ‘Getting Started’ user tutorial. We encourage you to start by editing your profile page so that your presence in Physiopedia is correct and up-to-date, following this you will feel more confident to go ahead and edit pages or create new pages. If you would like to contribute to topics or clinical areas that are not yet evident in Physiopedia, please contact us and we will set this up for you.

Increasing your profile as an editor

We are working on adding a reference on every page to the original editor and lead editors of that page. This means that if you create a new page of content or choose to be the lead editor of an existing page you will be permanently credited on that page with a link back to your profile. That’s why it’s important for your profile page to be up-to-date, and although we don’t allow unauthorised advertising in the main body of Physiopedia you are welcome to place links to your work, publications, projects etc on your profile page. Please let us know if you would like to be the lead editor on a page.

Educational projects in Physiopedia

If you are an educator we would like encourage you to consider using Physiopedia as a space where your students can complete individual work or class projects. By doing this not only will your students help to add valuable content to Physiopedia but they will also improve their scientific writing and referencing, critical appraisal, group working and web editing skills. Read our Educator Guide for more information or contact me directly by replying to this email to discuss this opportunity.

Your suggestions please

As a new and developing project we would very much welcome and encourage you, our editors, to make suggestions on how we could improve Physiopedia. Can we make it easier for you to contribute content in any way? Are there any other pages/facilities/functions that you would like us to add? Please let us know your thoughts and ideas. You can do this via the contact us page or reply to this email to contact me directly.

Happy editing
Rachael