Practical Evidence-Based Physiotherapy

Practical Evidence-Based Physiotherapy is designed to help physiotherapists of all levels of expertise to use high quality research evidence in their clinical decision making.

Written by an international team of experts and comprehensively updated in its third edition, the book considers how different sorts of evidence can be used to guide physiotherapy practice. It covers emerging methods, the use of both quantitative and qualitative research, and how to use online resources.

This book will help physiotherapy students and practitioners acquire fundamental skills of evidence-based practice and clinical reasoning, quickly find and use evidence in their work, and stay up to date with the latest evidence.

• Written specifically for physiotherapists, with physiotherapy examples throughout
• Clear explanations, research terminology explained
• Suitable for all levels of expertise - highlighted critical points and text box summaries (basic), detailed explanations in text (intermediate) and footnotes (advanced)
• Detailed strategies for searching physiotherapy-relevant databases, including the DiTA database
• Extensive consideration of clinical practice guidelines
• Emerging methods such as stepped-wedge trials, network meta-analysis, mixed methods reviews and process evaluations
• Widely referenced throughout

Professor Rob Herbert initially trained as a physiotherapist. Rob has an interest in clinical research and conducts randomised trials investigating the effects of physical interventions for motor impairment. He was a founding Director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Physiotherapy, which maintains the PEDro database (www.pedro.org.au), a unique database of randomised trials, systematic reviews and clinical practice guidelines in physiotherapy.

Kare Birger Hagen is Director, Reviews and Health Technology Assessment at the Norweigen Institute of Public Health, Oslo Norway.

Associate Professor Mark Elkins (PhD, MHSc, BA, BPhty) is based in Sydney, Australia, where he is a Senior Research Physiotherapist in the Department of Respiratory Medicine at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and a Clinical Associate Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at University of Sydney. He is also the Scientific Editor of the Journal of Physiotherapy (Elsevier). Mark is a co-director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Physiotherapy, which maintains the Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro; www.pedro.org.au), which hosts over 1.5 million searches per year.