The PEER Review: Practice and Evidence for Excellence in Rehabilitation Research

Every year, practitioners and policy-makers are exposed to more and more demands for evidence to underpin their decision-making. They could spend most of their time reading systematic reviews and still not be much wiser about what to do. And who has time for that much reading in their busy working life? As a keen rehabilitation practitioner, funder or researcher, the challenge of keeping up-to-date with the evidence can be overwhelming. Applying that evidence in practice can be even more daunting.

Our aim at The Hopkins Centre is to contribute to all these areas of EBP. Articles in The PEER Review focus on research evidence, practitioner-based knowledge and end-user preferences. There are several categories of articles that each bring different views: 

"Evidence": These articles focus on the latest systematic reviews in rehabilitation. Using plain English, we demystify the evidence and translate it into useable knowledge for practitioners, policy-makers, and funders. If you are time-poor, but still want to keep up-to-date about evidence, these articles should be helpful. "Perspectives": Stories written by people who have experienced disability. They share wisdom about what helps and usually have strong themes of dignity, access, and respect. These articles can assist practitioners and policy-makers in thinking about their services from a different perspective. They might be reflections, experiences, ideas, and possibilities that are refined after years of managing a disability. They offer an easy way to keep in touch with the views of service users.
"Practice": Sharing ideas about good practice across disciplines and sectors. Knowledge about what really works in rehabilitation or can actually be implemented is accumulated over years of practice. When practitioners retire or resign, they are unlikely to have systematically shared their knowledge with the future generation of practitioners. These articles are an opportunity for practitioners from the acute hospitals, the community and the private sector to share knowledge about what works and how to address key challenges they face every day.  "Spotlight": Short descriptions of innovative and creative services or interventions that may or may not have evidence but are working in the community. These articles describe how an innovation began, its journey and how it is influencing the challenge it set out to address. They may share the stories of innovators and founders who have often overcome seemingly insurmountable barriers to put new ideas into practice. Spotlight articles may also focus on researchers, practitioners or leaders in the sector who have made a contribution through their activity.
"Updates": These articles focus on a specific project that is either in its early stages, or producing results that need to be translated rapidly into practice or policy. Updates can occur at any time in a project lifecycle. They could explore a problem or idea to canvas the interest of other researchers, practitioners, consumers or policymakers. They could describe a method to see if others can share experience or ideas. They could present the results of an analysis or the translation that has occurred during or as a result of a project.  

To make it easier to access our publications, we have combined all our regular articles into this single online platform. Now you can access new information any time you wish. We hope you enjoy and benefit from one or more of these articles. We welcome content from everyone, so please let us know if you would like to contribute or have any ideas about topics and content that would be of interest.

To contribute to PEER, email us at hopkinscentre@griffith.edu.au. Don't forget to get social and follow us on twitter @hopkins_centre

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PEER Entries