Quality Assurance Strategy

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Introduction

Physiopedia is a UK based charity, not for profit organisation, that was launched in 2009 and is now the largest online physiotherapy / physical therapy resource in the world, and supports over 2 million page visits per month. You can read more about Physiopedia. Part of Physiopedia's success lies within its foundation as a wiki (Wikipedia for physiotherapists), a style of website which allows users to easily edit and contribute to its content. As such, Physiopedia has evolved into an extensive online encyclopaedia where qualified physiotherapists and physiotherapy students (under supervision), can make contributions in order to continuously promote evidence-based practice.

Physiopedia is dedicated to offering a high quality, content driven pages, for knowledge users, clinicians and researchers alike. Therefore, a quality assurance strategy is necessary to assure a certain level of academic and clinical accountability for Physiopedia content. In order to meet its aims and objectives of improving health globally by advancing education in relation to physiotherapy and improving access to physiotherapy knowledge there are many strategies and policies in place.

The following outlines both quality assurance strategies and quality improvement strategies employed by Physiopedia. A quality assurance (QA) strategy seeks to prevent, detect and correct problems in the quality of services provided to the knowledge users of Physiopedia. A quality improvement (QI) strategy attempts to improve the quality of Physiopedia, through the continuous monitoring and modification of the services being provided.

Assurance Strategies

Trustees

The Physiopedia Trustees have responsibility for the control and direction of the affairs of the charity. The Trustees are supported in their governance function by the Advisory Council. Detailed objectives are set to deliver against these goals in a strategic plan that is reviewed every two years. The objectives are decided by the Trustees with priorities and aims incorporated from the Advisory Council.

Advisory Council

The Physiopedia Advisory Council has been set up to provide professional, globally relevant and project related advice and information to the Physiopedia Trustees. The members of the Advisory Council are respected individuals that bring a unique set of skills and experience together to support the Physiopedia charity and help it achieve it's aims.

The Trustees and Advisory Council receive no remuneration for their duties.

Volunteers

Creating and editing Physiopedia content is no easy task and volunteers are enlisted to help with this mammoth task. In order to ensure that Physiopedia meets the needs of Global Physiotherapy / Physical Therapy global community the site can only be edited by Physiotherapists / Physical Therapists and Students. However before becoming a recognised volunteer there are certain criteria to be met, once a person has satisfied the criteria they are then invited to participate in a Volunteer Orientation Course which is run twice a year. In order to qualify as a volunteer and joint the Physiopedia team each person will:

• Have another physiotherapy related job!  All volunteer positions are part-time enabling the team to continue in their chosen physiotherapy career.
• Know that you are making a difference by making best clinical practice available to thousands of physiotherapists and their millions of patients worldwide.
• Have full access to Physioplus for continuing education and professional development needs.
• Join the team at conferences and social gatherings.

Once a volunteer has completed their training programme they will be welcomed on the team where they will be:

• Encouraged through our appraisal system. The first appraisal will take place 6 months after completing the course and thereafter appraisals will take place once a year. Each year a volunteer is on the team they will be awarded a badge.

• Supported on a daily basis through our communication and feedback system. For daily news, queries, updates and general chats we use Slack. Each member of the team is also invited to our monthly meetings via Zoom. As volunteers are located all over the world we hold meetings at various times to enable people to participate.

• Valued and appreciated. All contributions are greatly appreciated and each member of the team will be entitled to free access to Physioplus for all their training and development needs.

• Rewarded for outstanding effort and contributions. For those volunteers that go above and beyond their efforts will be recognised through our awards system.

For a full list of our current volunteers click here.

Quality Standards

With so many volunteers and contributors around the globe we obviously want to make sure that the quality of the content that is created meets standards allowing everyone to achieve excellent work. In order to assist in the highest standards we have created some guides and tutorial pages. This ensures that everyone has the best support to produce high quality pages.

• Review
• Research
• Feedback

• Content Review
• Quality Standards
• Review Guidelines
• References
• Academic Integrity
• Adding Images and media
• Copyright

Content Projects

As well as pages created by volunteers we also encourage collaboration with universities and organisations. Through these collaborations we encourage the development of projects based around a theme or topic. To ensure high standards and uniformity we have established special guides and tutorials to assist educators, project leaders and project developers to guide through every step of creation and publication.

• Projects
• Content Development Projects
• Educators Guide
• Projects Step by Step Guide
• Projects: FAQsProjects
• Content Development Projects
• Educators Guide
• Projects Step by Step Guide
• Projects: FAQs

Improvement Strategies

Topic Specialists

Physiopedia is in the process of developing a volunteer structure for topic specialties. A Physiopedia volunteer with a specialised background will be assigned to one or more of the following areas of expertise:

• Orthopedics - Cervical and thoracic spine
• Orthopedics -Upper extremities
• Orthopedics -Lumbar spine
• Orthopedics -Lower extremities
• Neurology
• Respiratory & Cardiology
• Pediatrics
• Geriatrics
• Physiology of pain
• Sports injuries
• Women's health
• Men's health
• Physiotherapy ethics and guidelines
• Physical activity and exercise
• Burn management and rehabilitation

Please note that is a dynamic list and is by no means comprehensive at this time. We will be adjusting the topic specialties as the volunteer base grows.

Feedback

Several methods exist for knowledge users to ask questions and engage with Physiopedia. We encourage knowledge users and volunteers to contact us with updates, required changes or suggestions as to how to make our content better. It is our goal to respond to inquiries by e-mail within 48 - 36 hours and to provide proof of any changes made, in response to their contact (for example - updating or a page, the addition of a reference etc.). Physiopedia does respond to content driven questions or comments, however please note that it not within our capability to respond directly to medical inquiries at this time.

Conclusion

(Ever-evolving)