Temple University Evidence-Based Practice Project

Welcome to Temple University's Orthopaedic Evidence-based Practice Assignment project. This project was created by and for the students at Temple University in Philidelphia, and is part of the Orthopaedic curriculum.

Course Instructors:

Scott Burns

Bill Egan

Heidi Ojha

Course Description:

This project is a component of the Orthopaedic Coursework in both the Doctor of Physical Therapy Program and  The Orthopaedic Physical Therapy Residency at Temple University.

Instructions

The assignment will challenge you to explore a given orthopaedic, integrate best evidence, including analysis of clinical trials, and develop and present professional digital content on a public wiki targeted to practicing professionals and students around the world. Your task is to develop a Physiopedia page after a review of the current best evidence on a given orthopaedic topic. The page should be an evidence-based review of your findings. This project will also consist of an oral group presentation of your page and topic, as well as the off-line submission of a one page critical analysis of a high-quality clinical trial.

Objectives

• Coherently present diagnostic methods and intervention strategies or techniques for patients with selected upper extremity (UE) disorders.  

• These disorders are often described via a classic disease or impairment/tissue model, however, you need to draw the link to physical therapy in terms of a impairment or disablement model and PT treatment. In other words what are the "key impairments" that result from these disorders and how can you as a therapist address these.

• Search for, analyze, and integrate the best evidence related to a given UE topic to guide physical therapist practice.  

• Evidence for treatment approaches that have been documented via clinical trials or other clinical research, if available, should be emphasized; if not the relative value of the alternative sources should be clarified.

• Develop digital media (web page, images, and video as appropriate) to present findings to the class, other students, and the general body of practicing physical therapists via an open international wiki site.

• The focus should be to create a targeted mini in-service on the assigned topic. It should be concise and targeted to your audience of fellow therapists. The web page should make sure to emphasize why these topics are relevant to physical therapy.

Here are some examples of the links you could add to the resources section: 

• Medical sites related to the disorder
• Video/photos related to the disorder
• Links to abstract of research in Pubmed/Medline

A template for the article pages which contains sub-headings headings for the disorder has been provided, please follow the template for uniformity of content.

Articles

Below are links to the articles created during this project.

Upper Quarter

• Cervical Examination
• Treatment Based Classification for Neck Pain
• Cervical Instability
  
• Thoracic Spine Examination
  
• Thoracic Outlet Syndrome
• Thoracic Disc Syndrome
• Shoulder Examination
• Rotator Cuff Tears
• Subacromial Impingement
• Shoulder Instability
• Shoulder Dislocation
• Acromioclavicular Joint Disorders
• Sternoclavicular Joint Disorders
• Elbow Examination
• Medial Epicondylitis
• Elbow Ligamentous Injuries
• Ulnar Nerve Entrapment
• DASH Outcome Measure
• Wrist & Hand Examination
• Wrist & Hand Osteoarthritis
• Metacarpal Fractures
• Dupuytren's Contracture