Creating Connections: Bringing clinicians together, research into practice, and clinicians into research
The Children’s Therapy Initiative (CTI) Network of Manitoba in a nutshell is…
A joint program of service providers and provincial government departments. The overarching goal of the CTI Network is to provide coordinated, regionally based Audiology, Occupational Therapy (OT), Physiotherapy (PT) and Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) services to children and youth across the province.
What role do I play?
As Research Coordinator for the CTI Network, one of my roles has been to create connections between Clinicians province-wide via our Clinical Best Practice Groups (CBPG) for pediatric Audiology, OT, PT and SLP.
What are Clinical Best Practice Groups (CBPG) you ask?
Clinical Best Practice Groups (CBPG) are groups that meet monthly to discuss current evidence-based best practices in their respective fields and different ways that CTI can support clinicians across the province.
Goals CBPG’s and their benefit to Clinicians/Researchers
CBPG goals are centred on:
Bringing clinicians together by promoting knowledge exchange and translation. In 2021-2022, the CBPG’s have organized and/or promoted eight education sessions across the disciplines (i.e., Audiology, Occupational Therapy (OT), Physiotherapy (PT) and Speech-Language Pathology (SLP)). While COVID has limited our ability to connect clinicians across the province face-to-face, holding education sessions virtually has increased the number of clinicians in remote and rural areas of the province that are able to attend.
Bringing research into practice by identifying and recommending clinical best practice. Toward this goal, the CBPGs have created an online resource compendium for Clinicians. Curated by the CBPGs, this compendium has research articles, educational videos and research summaries describing current research findings that are relevant to frontline clinicians. In addition to resources for clinicians, we have created handouts that can be given to families seeking children’s rehabilitation services
Bringing clinicians into research by identifying gaps in areas of research. As is the case with many frontline health care workers, the clinicians involved in the CBPGs struggle with devoting their time to conducting research. However, the clinicians are passionate about improving services, using new evidence-based practice whenever possible, and sharing their successes (and failures) with one another. Over time, our goal is to support clinician-led research projects whenever possible.
The Clinical Best Practice Groups are an important branch of the Children’s Therapy Initiative (CTI) Network of Manitoba, and we only see more growth and potential for the future.
About the Author
Michelle Lark is the Research Coordinator for the Children's Therapy Initiative, with the aim of coordinating pediatric OT, PT, SLP and audiology services for children across the province. She is also a psychology instructor at the University of Winnipeg and is passionate about conducting good science and creating well-designed studies. Her own academic research has focused on prospective memory. Michelle is married with two young daughters, ages six and three, who inspire her contributions to research