Clinical Usefulness of Provocative Tests for the Hand, Wrist, and Elbow: A Systematic Review

Abstract

of information. Most of the respondents felt comfortable or very comfortable in their ability to form a clear question based on a specific patient population, 262 (84%), performing a literature search, 226 (72%), and extrapolating the evidence to a patient, 241 (77%). Over 50% of the respondents (166) felt comfortable critically appraising the literature. 37% (115) of respondents felt comfortable identifying valid and reliable outcome measures, but only 18% (55) of respondents are comfortable designing a research study. 31% (96) of the therapist respondents are comfortable understanding statistical analysis that is presented in the literature, and 8% (26) are comfortable performing statistical analysis of data. The majority of therapist respondents (297) believe that EBP plays a positive role in clinical practice. 65% (202) of therapists believe that EBP is not a new concept. Most of the respondents, 92% (287), believe therapists should be able to distinguish methodologically sound research from poor research, EBP helps clinical decision making, 88% (276) and that EBP improves patient outcomes, 74% (231). 53% (166) of the respondents believe that clinical decisions should be based on numerical estimates of risks and benefits. Approximately 30% of the respondents believe that the proponents of evidence based medicine are academics rather than clinicians (89) and that there is little evidence available to guide practice (100). Less than 13% of the respondents believe that EBP is impractical for every day clinical practice (42), that it devalues clinical experience and intuition (37), and that it removes the ‘‘art’’ from practice (38).