Service Provider Guide

Below are a series of tutorial pages providing simple guides to the most common activities of Physiopedia readers and authors.  Please note that these tutorials are in development, if you have a question that is not answered here please add it to the Help FAQs page, alternatively you can email us.

For Editors

Basics

• Getting started
• Etiquette
• Editing your profile
• Editing pages
• Creating a new page
• Adding templates
• Adding references
• Making links
• Adding images
• Adding video
• Adding categories
• Adding PDF Files

Advanced

• Creating templates
• Merging pages
• MediaWiki Help 
• Wikitext 

For Educators

To find out more about setting up your project on Physiopedia visit the Step by Step Educators Guide. It includes guidance on:

• Creating an Physiopedia account
• Setting up your project page
• Guidance on the editing process
• Registering your students
• Monitoring your student's contributions
• Assessing your student's contributions

For Students

Creating and reviewing pages can be quite a daunting task you can visit the Step by Step Students Guide to help guide you through the process. It covers a range of topics including:

• Creating a Physiopedia Account
• How to find your Project Page
• Setting up your Profile Page
• How to edit and create pages

For Experts

As an Expert there are several ways you can contribute to Physiopedia. You can contribute by reviewing and updating pages as part of the One Page Project or by invitation to our Knowledge Translation Programme following a proven track record of publishing quality evidence-based pages/articles in Physiopedia.  You can read more about contributing as an expert following the links below:

• Experts Step by Step Guide
• Researchers Step by Step Guide

Introduction

Do you work for a physiotherapy or physical therapy service? For service providers, Physiopedia offers an opportunity to involve their staff in this knowledge creation process as part of service development programs.

This guide explains how Physiopedia can be used for service development in health care organisations, and also outlines ideas on how staff could incorporate Physiopedia into their continuing education and professional development.

Physiopedia's reach

Physiopedia is the largest physiotherapy and physical therapy resource in the world.  We reach the global community  and current statistics indicate that we have:

• ~ 1 million page views per month
• ~ 500,000 visitors per month
• are visited from over 200 countries per month
• around 15,000 pages on the website
• are connected to over 70,000 people through social media

Wikipedia for the physiotherapy community

Physiopedia is a wiki. A Wiki is a website that allows users to easily edit and contribute to that website. Wikis are particularly suited to collaborative group authoring of documents and websites. The most famous example of a Wiki is Wikipedia, a very extensive on-line encyclopaedia that allows anyone to add to and edit its entries.

Wikis for service development

The nature of wikis means they offer a number benefits relating to service and staff development:

• Wikis are ideal for individual or collaborative projects.
• Wikis can be edited and entries published without knowledge of specialist web development tools.
• A wiki enables the development history of a document to be explored revealing who contributed what and when.
  
• A wiki will never be lost along with the efforts that have been made in adding content to them, they can be continually updated and always be referred to.

Physiopedia in staff and service development

As a wiki, Physiopedia offers physiotherapy clinics and departments an opportunity to involve their students in the creation of this global resource as part of a service and staff development. 

Physiotherapy and physical therapy clinics and departments could use this opportunity to:

• In service training. A group of staff could be tasked with creating a new Physiopedia article prior to presenting it to the rest of the department or clinic. Examples of this activity could include development of treatment protocols, patient guides and case studies.
  
• Staff development.  Staff involvement in creating, reviewing and updating Physiopedia content is an excellent activity for developing clinical skills.  It will also help develop skills of web use, reflection, critical assessment and writing.
  
• Case studies can be added by staff as part of peer review.  Once added to Physiopedia they will be available for all to view and learn from.
  
• Individual portfolios can be created from an individuals profile page.  The flexible nature of wiki's allows an individual to be very creative in their personal portfolio creation and also allows for very flexible portfolio mentoring.
• Journal clubs can become involved in Physiopedia's partner site, Physiospot.  Articles can be reviewed by staff and thoughts added to the comments section related to each article. Comments can then be discussed in a face to face session or online with others outside of the service.
  

Why get involved

• Become a leader in service and staff development by (with our full support) utilising e-learning technologies.
• Know that you have been a part of the development of this valuable global collaborative effort.
  
• Your health care organisation will permanently be featured on our page of acknowledgements.
• Active engagement with Physiopedia will entitle you to free advertising space on your very own Physiopedia profile page.
• Also encourage your staff to create an on-line presence in their own profile page to market themselves and their work.
• Staff involvement in creating, reviewing and updating Physiopedia content is an excellent activity for continuing education and professional development.
  

Resources

Leeds University have developed an extensive site about using wikis in teaching and learning.

Further Information

For further information or to get involved please contact us.