The ENPHE fall conference took place in Washa Poland, The Faculty of Rehabilitation of the Józef Piłsudski University of Physical Education. Conference brought together physiotherapy teachers, researchers, and students to hear newest research results from the physiotherapy teaching topic and hear the results from the ENPHE’s working groups. The theme of the autumn conference was ” Physiotherapy Education: Aiming at Excellence through Collaboration”. The conference offered keynote speakers, activities and workshop. The Research Working Group (WG) of the European Network of Physiotherapy in Higher Education (ENPHE) is dedicated to advancing scientific inquiry and promoting Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) engagement among its members. The research group wants to promote both teachers’ and students’ knowledge of evidence-based physiotherapy. In recent years, new members have joined the research team, allowing new ideas to be conceived and implemented.

The research group has published blog articles about their work (Äijö et al 2023a and 2023b). Below is a brief description of the ongoing projects that were taken forward during the spring 2024 and presented in fall conference 2024. More information and outputs you can find from ENPHE’s website.

Current Projects

Over the past year, members of the research group have been working on with the different topics. Below are brief descriptions of the themes now being working with.

Systematic review

Following our exploratory review published in 2023 (Boshnjaku et a. 2023) on the types of teaching sequences for teaching EBP, the question of using a relevant tool to assess an “EBP clinician profile” arises. Indeed, in order to identify the best teaching methods promoting the learning of EBP, it is imperative to know in advance the most relevant outcome. Nine systematic reviews have studied this subject. However, they do not study all the facets of an assessment (knowledge, competence, attitude, behavior and self-efficacy), do not have a high AMSTAR-2 score, do not include certain essential keywords and subsequent articles are already available. We decided to conduct a systematic review with the aim of identifying the best tool for assessing an “EBP clinician profile” by constructing a method with the best methodological quality achievable. This method was developed to follow the most items of AMSTAR-2 and the report follows the PRISMA 2020 recommendations. This article focuses on the five dimensions of assessment of an “EBP clinician profile”. After searching in several databases (> 18), more than 32,000 articles were identified. The removal of duplicates reduced this number to more than 17,000. We are currently in the phase of selecting articles using the title and abstract on which we use the eligibility criteria set upstream. At the end of this phase, we will examine the selected articles on the basis of their full text. This will be followed by the critical appraisal reading of articles phase.

ERASMUS+ Blended Intensive Programme (BIP); Evidence-Based Physiotherapy

Last October, a group of lecturers of the ENPHE research group carried out a BIP program to approach Evidence-Based Physiotherapy to physiotherapy students in Europe. With this focus, a group of 40 international students met in the University of Savonia and followed an intensive week program in which more than seven lectures participated and provided their expertise to analyze the evidence in the different fields. This experience has shown very positive outcomes and satisfactory attitudes beyond students and lecturers. That is why, a second edition is being planned for next autumn which will be held in Prague, coordinated by Prof, Dagmar Pavlu. Students from Finland, Spain, Finland and the Czech Republic will participate in the program, the topic of which will again be Evicence Based Practice.

More Life to Your Years

At this meeting, Marlies Wagener presented a short overview of the results of various student projects conducted in the past few years at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences. The studies provide us more insight into the perception of their health among people aged 60 years and older; their support needs, and their perception of best practices in staying healthy. We also obtained quantitative results on the EFIP questionnaire (De Vries et al., 2013).

Also next year students will work on this project with various research questions relating to pre-frailty. Both quantitative and qualitative studies will be conducted. Besides this, we will start with a scoping review on the definition of pre-frailty to improve evidence on this important topic. Members interested in contributing to the More life to your years project may contact Anne Griet Brader (a.g.brader@pl.hanze.nl) or Marlies Wagener (m.n.wagener@hr.nl)

Facilitating teaching of research and scientific methods. Survey for the teachers

Since the last meeting, in the teacher survey project we have carried out our research plan and defined more precisely the items, sections and questions of the questionnaire. We have also reflected on new questions. We have worked on our sample size and have collaborated online among the members of this sub-working group. At this ENPHE conference, the methodology is wildly elaborated and presented. We have established a cross-sectional study methodology, targeting Physiotherapy Universities and Universities of Applied Sciences in European countries as potential participants. The survey will be conducted in English. Furthermore, the survey which will be self-administered questionnaire (Microsoft Forms), will be caried out by lecturers, professors or researchers with teaching hours, 1 year experience. We will continue to develop the survey and we would like to submit our research plan and conduct our pilot study soon.

The research team continues its active work!

Authers

Marja Äijö PhD, principal lecture of rehabilitation and gerontology, Savonia University Applied Sciences, Finland. marja.aijo@savonia.fi

Zeltia Naia-Entonado. PT, MSc, PhD. University of a Coruña, Spain.

Verónica Robles García, PhD, MSc, PT, OT. University of a Coruña, Spain.

Dagmar Pavlů, physiotherapist, associate professor, Charles University, Czech Republic.

Anne Griet Brader, Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Netherland.

Merita Qorolli, University of Prishtina, Faculty of Medicine, Physiotherapy Branch, Prishtina, Republic of Kosovo

Wagener Marlies, PhD, lecturer and senior researcher Physiotherapy education, Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, Netherland

Adrien Pallot, Physiotherapy Department, CEERRF and dInstitut d’Ingénierie de la Santé, UPJV, France.

References:

Boshnjaku A, Arnadottir AS, Pallot A, Wagener M, Äijö M. 2023. Improving the Evidence-Based Practice Skills of Entry-Level Physiotherapy Students through Educational Interventions: A Scoping Review of Literature. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2023, 20(16), 6605; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20166605

de Vries NM, Staal JB, Olde Rikkert MG, Nijhuis-van der Sanden MW. 2013. Evaluative frailty index for physical activity (EFIP): a reliable and valid instrument to measure changes in level of frailty. Phys Ther. 93(4):551-61. doi: 10.2522/ptj.20120127.

The European Network of Physiotherapy in Higher Education (ENPHE). 2023. In available: https://www.enphe.org/en

Äijö M, Boshnjaku A, Pallot A, Griet Brader A, den Ouden I, Schoo P, Naia Entonado Z, Pojerová J, Pavlu D. 2023a. Educating Physiotherapists for a Global Mindset – ENPHE and research groups results. Published: 18.10.2023. In available: https://www.savonia.fi/en/articles/educating-physiotherapists-for-a-global-mindset-enphe-and-research-groups-results/

Äijö M, Wagener M, Pallot A, Pavlu D, Arnadottir SA. 2023b. Evidence-based Practice – Experiences from Teachers and Students. Savonia article. Published: 27.1.2023. In available: https://www.savonia.fi/en/articles/savonia-article-evidence-based-practice-experiences-from-teachers-and-students/