Knowledge Translation Lecture: Providing Best Practice in Neonatal Intensive Care and Follow-up: A Clinician-Researcher Collaboration

Igniting the Fire of Discovery: Creating Partnerships Between Research, Education, and Practice

In the 28th H.P. Maley Lecture, Stacey Dusing, PT, PhD, FAPTA, shares a perspective on the importance of clinician-scientists in bridging the chasm that currently exists between scholarship and clinical practice. Describing herself as a clinician-scientist, or a qualified health care professional who functions mainly as a career scientist with the other portion of time dedicated to clinical practice, Dusing highlights the potential impact of limited training for clinician-scientists in the physical therapist profession and its impact on the future of physical therapy. She challenges all physical therapists to consider the impact of Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education requirements on scholarship and the lack of requirement for clinical practice while also recognizing that training programs for clinician-scientists are quite limited. Reviewing some historical data and highlighting possible areas for growth, Dusing calls physical therapists to action in 4 areas. This paper calls all physical therapists, especially educators and administrators, to consider the role of clinician-scientist in promoting physical therapy and knowledge translation. The author challenges the profession to consider whether we are helping to train or embed clinician-scientists in our clinical workplaces to promote knowledge translation. Suggestions are made to improve research and clinical training programs to increase the number of clinician-scientists in physical therapy.

2022 APTA Pediatrics Knowledge Translation Lecture: Clinicians and Researchers Collaborate to Implement a Segmental Approach to Trunk Control

The aim of this special communication is to describe a clinician/researcher collaboration that supported implementation of the segmental approach to trunk control into physical therapy practice at a large, multisite, pediatric hospital. A 6-phase, multifaceted iterative process including use of educational strategies, the knowledge-to-action (KTA) cycle, the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research, and the Theoretical Domains Framework was used. The total number of Segmental Assessments of Trunk Control (SATCos) completed increased from 0 to 57. Fifteen of 23 physical therapists representing 7 clinic locations referred a child for a SATCo. Using education alone or education plus the KTA cycle resulted in minimal uptake. Using more formal contextual assessments and mapping of barriers to strategies using implementation frameworks, collaborative goal setting, and planning resulted in more effective strategies and increase in uptake of the segmental approach in later phases.

Functional movement assessment with the Test of Infant Motor Performance

The purpose of this article is to review research on the Test of Infant Motor Performance, a functional assessment of movement capabilities with age standards for infants from 34 weeks postmenstrual age through 17 weeks post term (corrected age). The Test of Infant Motor Performance was normed on a U.S. population-based sample to support its use as a tool for diagnosing delayed motor development in early infancy. The test is one of the preferred methods for parents of babies in special care nurseries to learn about their infant's development. The test was used in a variety of clinical trials to document effects of early therapy and can be used as a short-term outcome measure for other interventions expected to impact functional motor performance.