Obstacles to the implementation of evidence-based physiotherapy in practice: A focus group-based study in Belgium (Flanders)

A Qualitative Study of Individual and Organizational Learning through Physiotherapists’ Participation in a Research Project

“…Attitudes towards research have been identified as a key factor in research use among physiotherapists; more positive attitudes are associated with a higher degree of use of research findings in routine practice [3] [6] [8] [31] [32]. The physiotherapists in our study seemed to gain a deeper understanding of the research process as they recognized some of the challenges involved in conducting research.…”

Exploring Barriers to the Implementation of Evidence-Based Practice in Psychiatry to Inform Health Policy: A Focus Group Based Study

“…This appears to be consistent with international literature and therefore contributes to the validation of our findings. However, it was noticed that many of these concerns have been mentioned by other health care practitioners as well (Hannes et al 2005(Hannes et al , 2007(Hannes et al , 2008a(Hannes et al , b, 2009Schofield et al 2006). A recent study comparing obstacles experienced by psychiatrists with obstacles experienced in other health care disciplines revealed that general practitioners and physiotherapists also experience a broad variety of complex problems and difficulties to diagnose patients during the first encounter (Hannes et al 2008b).…”

“…Obstacles preventing psychiatrists from applying EBP have been extensively discussed in the psychiatric literature. Some are general and apply to many health care disciplines, such as the insufficiency of training and lack of time to implement EBP in practice and the lack of resources or access to information (Hannes et al 2005(Hannes et al , 2007(Hannes et al , 2008a(Hannes et al , b, 2009Schofield et al 2006). The absence of evidence in relation to many clinical questions and the difficulties to translate scientific results from RCT's into meaningful interventions for individual patients contribute to the difficulties of implementing EBP.…”

Evidence-Based Practice in Practice : Exploring Conditions for Using Research in Physiotherapy

“…• can improve the quality of patient care (Barnard and Wiles, 2001;Jette et al, 2003;Salbach et al, 2007;Akinbo et al, 2009;Nilsagård and Lohse, 2010;Heiwe et al, 2011) • is helpful for making decisions about patient care (Jette et al, 2003;Salbach et al, 2007;Akinbo et al, 2009;Heiwe et al, 2011) • can enhance the status of the physiotherapist profession (Barnard and Wiles, 2001;Hannes et al, 2009) • can facilitate an increased reimbursement rate if EBP is incorporated into their clinical practice (Jette et al, 2003;Akinbo et al, 2009;Heiwe et al, 2011) • can yield improved relationships with other health professions as well as better working conditions (Barnard and Wiles, 2001) In general, physiotherapists hold favourable attitudes towards EBP and believe it is important that practice is based on the most up-to-date evidence available (Barnard and Wiles, 2001;Kamwendo, 2002;Stevenson et al, 2004;Iles and Davidson, 2006;Grimmer-Somers et al, 2007;Caldwell et al, 2007;Nilsagård and Lohse, 2010;Heiwe et al, 2011). However, these attitudes do not seem to be fully "translated" into clinical practice, as many studies have shown that physiotherapists continue to make decisions based on knowledge obtained during their initial education and/or personal experience, rather than findings from research (Overmeer et al, 2004;Mikhail et al, 2005;Bridges et al, 2007;Heiwe et al, 2011;Filbay et al, 2012).…”

“…• poor confidence in skills to identify and critically appraise research (Hannes et al, 2009;Salbach et al, 2007;Grimmer-Somers et al, 2007;Stevenson et al, 2004;Palfreyman et al, 2003) • insufficient time due to patient work commitments (Swinkels et al, 2011;Fruth et al, 2010;Kamwedo et al, 2002) • insufficient support from colleagues (Salbach et al, 2007) • perceived isolation from peers (Grimmer-Somers et al, 2007) • inadequate support from managers and other health professionals (Barnard and Wiles, 2001;Swinkels et al, 2011;Hannes et al, 2009;Bekkering et al, 2003) • poor access to Web-based research resources and computer skills (Salbach et al, 2007) It is noteworthy that the research findings concerning implementation of EBP in physiotherapy are quite similar to those pertaining to other professions in health care. Indeed, barriers to achieving a more EBP in health care have become fairly well established in many studies since the late 1990s.…”