Service Provider Guide

Do you work for a phyisotherapy 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.

What is a wiki

A Wiki is a website that allows any visitor to easily contribute to and edit 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 encylopedia 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

• Student involvement in creating, reviewing and updating Physiopedia content is an excellent activity for developing reflection, critical assessment and writing skills. 
• Encouraging students to become actively involved in Physiopedia early in their careers will encourage them to interact professionally with colleagues from the start.
• Being involved from the initial stages students will continue to contribute content to Physiopedia to assist in the development of the profession in the future.
  
• Know that your institution has been a part of the development of this valuable global collaborative effort.
• Institutions that partner with us in this way will permanently be featured on our page of acknowledgements.
• Partner institutions will also be entitled to free course advertising space on Physiopedia.
  

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.