Article 6: Rehabilitation practitioners’ perspectives on research utilization for evidence-based practice

Abstract

Objective: To explore rehabilitation practitioners’ perspectives on barriers and solutions related to research utilization for evidence-based practice. Design: Focus group study. Setting: Conference room. Participants: 13 rehabilitation practitioners (occupational therapists, physical therapists, speech-language pathologists). Intervention: Participants discussed the barriers that prevented them from effectively using research information for evidence-based practice, and ways that they thought would help improve the usability of research information. Main Outcome Measures: Transcribed and coded verbal responses. Results: Top barriers included research topic not relevant to practice, sample not relevant to practice, lack of explanation for practical application, researchers’ lack of real-life knowledge about clinical situation, and presentation of research in article format not user-friendly. Practitioners also suggested ways to help alleviate those barriers. Conclusion: Rehabilitation researchers may need to rethink the way they conduct and report research in order to make information more usable, and thus increase utilization, for evidence-based practice. Although definite conclusion cannot be drawn from the present study due to its preliminary nature, the findings strongly indicated the need for future research about the issue of research utilization, which has not been adequately studied in the rehabilitation community.