Being familiar with scientific studies are an important part of the training of all health care professionals. This involves equally doing research and interpret research. This can be very important as all health care professionals ought to need to be able to employ research results into their clinical practice. From time to time research results can contradict the opinions of individual doctors and so they require the abilities to be able to overcome those disparities to give the ideal evidence centered treatment to their clients. It will be the research which informs us just what treatments do work and which ones possibly do not work or are not any superior to a placebo. On the regular live show for podiatry practitioners, PodChatLive this is a issue that comes up on a regular basis in the context of many different subjects that they go over. It happens to be such an important issue that the hosts of PodChatLive devoted an entire edition to the theme of research methods and their importance for clinicians to actually appreciate.
In the episode on research methods the PodChatLive hosts spoke with the research physiotherapist Rod Whiteley. In the episode they discussed the reason why it is recommended for all health care professionals to often study and understand research reports and be confident carrying this out. They discussed some tips on the way to examine a publication along the way. They highlighted the problem of p values and the reason why 0.05 isn't the miracle number along with the using of confidence intervals, reliability, number needed to treat (NNT) along with the minimal clinically important difference. One important takeaway for all from the episode would be to know about effect sizes. Dr Rod Whiteley PhD is a Specialized Sports Physio who has served on the College of Sports Physiotherapy’s Board as their Chief Examiner and has worked with a number of professional and international clubs as well as athletes in numerous sports, including Rugby League and Union, Baseball, Football, Squash, and Athletics.