SPECIAL INTEREST REPORT PLATFORM PRESENTATION

IMPROVING PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE BY USING INTERNET. Aars M; Dept. of Physiotherapy Education, Tromsoe University College, Norway

PURPOSE: To develop a best possible clinical practice must be a goal for all physiotherapists. One way to do this, is to examine one owns practice thoroughly. At Tromsoe University College we have developed an internet-based tool: “Physio-net”, where one of the elements included, can assist examining and exploring clinical practice, by using video and text simultanously. We wanted to investigate how this tool could enhance professional development for students and experienced clinicians, based on a conception of physiotherapy as communication. RELEVANCE: Reflection is one important aspect of continuing professional development. Today, internet provides us with new possibilities for combinations of visualisation, expressing and sharing such knowledge. “Physio-net” makes physiotherapy practice accessible for sharing reflections, and discussing professional issues regarding professional knowledge, including “tacit knowledge”. The study shows how learning is stimulated in students and professionals, by using this specific tool. DESCRIPTION: The study involved one experienced clinician and four students. The clinician filmed and described one assessment of a patient, and made one “guided analysis” for “Physio-net”. She was supervised to analyse her practice from three perspectives: From the physiotherapist’s perspective, from the patient’s perspective and from an encounter perspective, an understanding of physiotherapy which structures the content in “Physio-net”. She was interviewed afterwards, regarding how this work had affected her understanding of practice. She had become more aware of her underlying assumptions, and more careful in jumping to conclusions when assessing and understanding patients’ problems. The four students did the same with one of their patients. They were supervised along their working process, but was guided to find their own way to do it. The students made notes where they reflected upon their experiences on how their learning was stimulated. They found this way of examining their own practice extremely motivating. They became more aware of their manual skills, and how they communicated with the patient, and they learned a lot by struggling to express what they did and why. EVALUATION: The effective means to enhance reflection were: Viewing one self over and over again, expressing practical knowledge in text, combination of the two, supervision and the three-dimensional perspective in “Physio-net”. In a learning perspective, it is important not only to express one’s tacit knowledge, but to challenge that knowledge. The net structure functioned as such a critical dimension, as did the supervision. For learning to occur it must be a fine balance between acknowledgement and challenge, which will be a supervisor’s task to handle. CONCLUSIONS: Learning processes can be facilitated by the use of combinations of new technology, which integrates visualisation and expression of knowledge, and supervision. Thereby practical and tacit knowledge can be explored and critically examined by one self and others. IMPLICATIONS: Technology which combines video and text and supervision is a strong way to improve clinical practice and should be used in physiotherapy education as well as in continuing professional development. The way we did it, is based on a conception of physiotherapy as communiaction, which is a most important perspective for future physiotherapy practice. KEYWORDS: Continuing professional development; Reflection; ICT. FUNDING ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: None. CONTACT: marianne.aars@hitos.no