I am employed by an academic institution with a fine health science library. I belong to several sections of the APTA as well as the AAOMPT. Through these affiliations I am able to get my hands on quite a few journals and read full text articles when I like.
I was thinking the other day, about how many allied health professionals do not have access to such a library of content. This would include those working in private practice, non-academic hospitals, rehab centers, local school systems, etc. How do these folks get their dose of evidence? How difficult is it to get access to an important new article?
There is PEDRO, and the Cochrane Database, and the APTA resources such as Open Door, but these are far reduced from what I use. They also suffer from lack of use among therapists. A scattering of journals offer free text, but usually there is a time delay or restriction with this. A service like InfoPOEMs is kind of expensive and not rehab focused even if it is useful in theory.
A colleague recently left the hospital system that I’m in and now works at a corporately owned outpatient clinic. She has no access to journals.
Barriers lead to inactivity. Inactivity leads to the failure of the principles surrounding Evidence-Based Practice. How much of a professional duty is it for health care providers to pay their own $$ for access to evidence? How much of that burden should fall on the employer?
I will assume that a majority of the Physical Therapy work force is in practice settings with limited access to rehab/ortho journals. Does this mean that the majority of the profession does not keep up with new evidence? Regardless of that being true or not, I think these barriers need to come down somehow.
Any thoughts on access to literature among Physical Therapists?
Image: Arnold Bernhard Library, Quinnipiac UniversityHamden, Connecticut
Labels: physical therapy, Research