Physiopedia:About

Mission

Physiopedia will be a resource for rehabilitation professionals throughout the world, offering a place to contribute, share, and gain knowledge. The content of Physiopedia will be driven by experts and represent an evidence-based approach to patient care. As a worldwide site, Physiopedia works to unite physiotherapists and physical therapists from all reaches of our planet.

Aims

Physiopedia aims to be:

1. the online reference source for rehabilitation professionals.
2. a collaborative effort of physiotherapists and physical therapists around the world.
3. a system to unite the views of physiotherapists and physical therapists around the world.
4. a tool for educators to integrate into the teaching of physiotherapy and physical therapy students.
   
5. a learning activity for professional development.
   
6. conducive to good evidence based patient care.

Reference Source

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Physiopedia is a free online reference source for rehabilitation professionals.  It is an evidence-based resource that includes clinically relevant information for all aspects of physiotherapy and physical therapy practice.  It explores a plethora of clinical specialities and encompasses many aspects of each speciality. Driven by experts and written by qualified physiotherapists and physical therapists it includes clinically relevant information that clinicians find useful in their practice and ultimately in the provision of good patient care.

Collaborative

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Physiopedia is a collaborative effort of physiotherapists and physical therapists around the world.  The site is a wiki, like wikipedia, but specific to the physiotherapy and physical therapy profession. What is a wiki? A wiki is a collection of web pages that can be collaboratively edited with no specialist tools and very little technical know-how.  Although all of the content of Physiopedia can be viewed by anyone. To contribute by editing pages you will need to be a qualified physiotherapist or physical therapist, or a physiotherapy or physical therapy student under guidance of one of our partnering organisations.  It's easy to edit pages in this wiki. When you are logged in each page has an Edit tab at the top of the page. If you want to change something on the page, click the Edit link, and the wiki will display a simple editing screen. When you finish making changes, click save and your changes show up on the website.

International

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Physiopedia is a system to unite the views of physiotherapists and physical therapists around the world.  As a website that can be viewed and collaboratively edited from any computer with an internet connection anywhere in the world, it is a totally global resource and effort.  Although the aim of good patient care is undivided throughout the world, the profession does have divergent approaches to patient care in different parts of the world. On pages where differing opinions occur there is a matching 'talk' page where discussions can take place and hopefully views will be united.

Education

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Physiopedia will be used as a teaching method in physiotherapy and physical therapy education. It can be used as a tool for educators to integrate into the teaching of students.  The students can be tasked to research specific topics and then record their findings by adding or editing content within physiopedia.  If you are an instuctor interested in learning how to use this wiki in your course, visit our [Educators Guide] page.

Professional Development

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Physiopedia is a learning activity for professional development.  Whether just reading and learning from or by the collaborative editing of this resource physiotherapists and physical therapists will learn from the experience.  This new learning can be appropriately incorporated into clinical practice.

Patient Care

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Physiopedia will be conducive to good patient care.    Ultimately by the incorporation of this evidence-based knowledge into clinical practice our patients will benefit from improved patient care.

Development Team

The following people are the founders of the Physiopedia site:

Rachael Lowe

Eric Robertson

The following organisations are working in association with Physiopedia to develop this site:

Sheffield Hallam University, UK

Medical College of Georgia, USA