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Interactive Educational Workshops and Follow-up Support: A Strategy to Facilitate Allied Health Clinicians' Routine Measurement of Clinical Outcomes

Interactive Educational Workshops and Follow-up Support: A Strategy to Facilitate Allied Health Clinicians' Routine Measurement of Clinical Outcomes

Status
Completed
Phases
Phase 3
Study type
Interventional
Source
ANZCTR
Registry ID
ACTRN12606000500550
Enrollment
108
Registered
2006-12-05
Start date
2005-11-29
Completion date
Unknown
Last updated
2020-01-13

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

None listed

Brief summary

Previous studies have highlighted the need for better training of health professionals in outcome measurement, so that limited time and resources are spent on interventions that improve the health of the population. Currently less than 30% of allied health professionals routinely use outcome measures in practice. Fewer still use reliable, published measures. The primary aim of this study is to: Determine the effectiveness of a one-day interactive educational workshop, with printed educational materials and 3 months email and telephone follow-up support on the use of outcome measures by allied health professionals. All allied health professionals (N=121) employed by The Spastic Centre of New South Wales were invited to participate in the study. The study assessed changes in outcome measurement behaviour, knowledge and skills at baseline, 3 months and 6 months.

Interventions

Intervention Group 1) One-day interactive educational workshop consisting of lectures, small group work and discussion sessions. Content covered included an introduction to outcome measures, setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Activity based, Review, Time frame) goals, the outcome measurement process, strategies to successfully implement outcome measures, information on nine specific outcome measures relevant to people with cerebral palsy and autism and their carers, matching client limitation

Intervention Group 1) One-day interactive educational workshop consisting of lectures, small group work and discussion sessions. Content covered included an introduction to outcome measures, setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Activity based, Review, Time frame) goals, the outcome measurement process, strategies to successfully implement outcome measures, information on nine specific outcome measures relevant to people with cerebral palsy and autism and their carers, matching client limitations and outcome measures, and reporting outcome measure results and clinical decision making. 2) Resource folder containing notes from lectures and small group and discussion activities. A summary and critique of the 9 outcome measures presented including information on developers, access to the measure, cost, copyright, a description of the measure, administration, scoring and interpretation, suitable populations, languages the measure has been published in, International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) level/s targetted by the measure, psychometric properties and references. 3) 3 months of email and telephone follow-up support. All participants in the intervention group receceived 1 group email per week. The purpose of the email was to encourage clinicians to use outcome measures in their daily practise, provide additional information on outcome measures that may be of use to them. The researcher also responded to all individual emails and telephone calls received from participants in the intervention group.

Sponsors

University of Western Sydney, Dr Catherine Cook, Dr Annie McCluskey & Dr Natasha Lannin
Lead SponsorIndividual

Study design

Allocation
Randomised controlled trial
Intervention model
Parallel
Primary purpose
Educational / counselling / training
Masking
Blinded (masking used)

Eligibility

Sex/Gender
All
Age
18 Years to 65 Years
Healthy volunteers
No

Inclusion criteria

1) Be employed by The Spastic Centre New South Wales; 2) Have professional qualifications (diploma, undergraduate degree or postgraduate degree) in the following allied health disciplines: Occupational therapy, physiotherapy, speech pathology, psychology, social work, social welfare or counselling;3) Be of working age

Exclusion criteria

Allied health professionals employed by The Spastic Centre of New South Wales who do not treat clients will be excluded from participating in this study. The reason for this being that participants must be in a position where they actively treat clients in order to be able to measure client progress and effectiveness of interventions using outcome measures.

Outcome results

None listed

Source: ANZCTR · Data processed: Feb 4, 2026