Date Presented 04/04/2025
Rural therapists in acute settings face challenges, such as gaps in institutional knowledge. The purpose of this focus group was to uncover the needs of therapists and the ways to support evidence-based practice among therapists treating patients with spinal cord injuries.
Primary Author and Speaker: Timothy Dionne
Contributing Authors: Patricia Siegel, Vinh Q. Vinh
PURPOSE: Rural acute care therapists, particularly in New Mexico, face challenges such as personnel changes leading to gaps in mentorship and population specific expertise. Or they face barriers to promoting evidence-based practice. Rural practitioners may only see a dozen SCI patients in a year, which can cause self-doubt, confusion, and miscommunication in care, leading to poor or worse outcomes. Continuing education or remote learning may not be the most optimal way to promote expertise (Peterson et al. 2022).
DESIGN: This qualitative study employs focus group methods to explore opportunities and needs practitioners to overcome challenges faced in rural acute care settings with SCI patients. We drew from preliminary findings of related studies which highlighted educational opportunities, enabling factors of success from therapy denser geographical regions, as well as institutional barriers, to develop questions.
METHOD: Focus groups were conducted with 12 expert and novice practitioners. We asked participants to describe their experiences with developing expertise and barriers faced. Probes included anecdotes on effective support and challenges faced when promoting evidenced-based care and their subsequent outcomes. We utilized the constant comparison coding process, reaching saturation, in order to build preliminary themes grounded in data (Charmaz, 2014).
RESULTS: Employing findings from the focus group, we constructed a model that describes behaviors and opportunities to promote expertise and knowledge not just within therapists, but also institutionally. Among all the challenges facing rural institutions therapists’ confidence and competence with SCI patients should be highly valued.
CONCLUSION: Findings point to the value of institutional and individual priority of knowledge and expertise as a moral obligation.
References
Peterson, S., Weible, K., Halpert, B., & Rhon, D. I. (2022). Continuing education courses for orthopedic and sports physical therapists in the United States often lack supporting evidence: a review of available intervention courses. Physical therapy, 102(6), pzac031.
Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory. Sage.
