VALUABLE INNOVATIONS VIA VIRTUAL PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES THROUGH COVID-19: ADVANCING PHYSIOTHERAPY PRACTITIONERS

¹Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, London, United Kingdom

Background: Advanced Practitioner and First Contact Physiotherapists demonstrate specialized skills to maximize effective healthcare delivery and are an exciting future of physiotherapy. They streamline patient care, provide a viable option towards reducing waiting lists, furthering a culture of expert clinical reasoning and are at the forefront of the patient pathway in primary care provision. Investigating how these physiotherapists use virtual networked learning opportunities is of benefit to the profession in promoting innovation, revealing novel strategies that this clinical workforce may implement to manage their workload and further their advanced practice.

Purpose: The clinical remit of Advanced and First Contact Practitioner Physiotherapists is growing. Gaps in research exist in discovering how they can be supported in their advancement as proficient-expert physiotherapists and to prevent professional burnout. Exploring the interactions of these practitioners within a virtual professional learning community (vPLC) could be of great value, especially to those operating in lone working/remote environments. Investigating this as they carried out their clinical practices and reflected on complex case patient management through the Covid-19 pandemic was a main objective in this study.

Methods: In collaboration with the UK Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) Learning Development team and after receiving ethical approval through the University of Hull, UK, an interpretivist, qualitative case study research methodology was employed to investigate a community of practitioners (n=4) spread across differing UK primary care networks. Data collection included observations of discourse and interactions between vPLC research participants using WhatsApp as a virtual setting for two months whilst carrying out clinical practices during a significant wave of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Additional data records included verified transcriptions of individual semi structured online interviews. Thematic data analysis involved coding by the researcher in successive stages alongside iterative evaluations.

Results: Findings suggested vPLCs can provide networked learning opportunities and facilitate reflective practice amongst physiotherapists. Themes revealed:
1) collated evidence of experiential knowledge building amongst varied practitioners whilst solving real-time clinical challenges and synchronously adapting to telemedicine practice,
2) reflection-in-action practices and bridging of physiotherapy cluster communities to provide networked information for lone working clinicians and those operating in remote locations,
3) insightful implementation of vPLCs facilitating clinical reasoning, continuing education capabilities and CPD working commitments for advanced physiotherapists.

Conclusions: This case addresses gaps from previous research, uncovering strategies that Advanced Physiotherapists can adopt to prevent burnout and fulfil career competencies in reflective practice. As practitioners continue to adapt to telerehabilitation becoming widely adopted since the COVID-19 pandemic, this study infers tangible innovations for physiotherapists and stakeholders in using vPLCs to manage workloads, analyse real-time clinical problems and evaluate reflection through networked learning information management records.

Implications: This study is of importance as it reveals novel approaches in using real-time data for preventing potential burnout of Advanced and First Contact Practitioner Physiotherapists tackling broadening workloads. In addition, there is potential for developing policies to implement vPLCs as a big data resource for facilitating practice and learning between patients and practitioners (newly qualified to proficient expert), and wide-reaching clinical communities to develop the future of the profession and wider stakeholders.

Funding acknowledgements: No direct funding was received for this study.

Keywords:
Virtual Professional Learning Communities
First Contact Practitioner Physiotherapists
Reflective Practice

Topics:
Innovative technology: information management, big data and artificial intelligence
Education
COVID-19

Did this work require ethics approval? Yes

Institution: University of Hull

Committee: University of Hull UK Ethics Committee

Ethics number: 1819PGR14