Tweetchat: Weighing the evidence

Our third #ResNetSLT Twitter journal club took place on Wednesday, 30th March, 2016.

It proved to be another lively discussion – thanks to all who joined in, especially those who are very new to Tweetchatting.

The chat was based around this article. Chaired by Joanne Fillingham the chat featured the three paper authors – Hazel Roddam, Sarah Edney and Heulwen Sheldrick.

This paper illustrates the process of reviewing the available evidence base. In this case the clinical population comprises people with Parkinson's Disease (PD) who have swallowing difficulties and was prompted by a genuine real-world clinical dilemma:

• What is the best case management for my patients?
• Why does the accepted management seem to be limited to only compensatory approaches when there is at least some published evidence for more active rehabilitation strategies?

You can find the pre-chat information and questions here.

In the Tweetchat we broadened the discussion to consider the processes of undertaking an evidence review, based on Sackett's five-step model of Evidence-Based Practice.

We hope that posting a brief overview of the key themes that came out through our discussions will give the chance for everyone to continue the conversation – you can post your own comments at any time on this blogsite.

The link to the full transcript is here and the key themes included:

• The challenge of accessing full papers and research publications
• Skills and confidence needed for critical analysis of published research
• Recommendations to get help and support through CAHPR Hubs, professional bodies, research-active colleagues and contact with your local university departments
• Value of journal clubs to discuss papers and strength of the evidence for changing practice
• Other sources of support (and possible constraints) from organisations and workplace settings.

You can see the detailed analysis of the Tweetchat here.

It was a great conversation with lots of generously shared advice – thanks to everyone who took part.

For those who were listening in, we hope that you found something useful too. We emphasised again that everyone is most welcome to join us - we were very pleased to see that we again had a range of AHP professionals engaging in our chat.

Distance is no barrier – that is the value of our virtual online community and we really hope to continue to hear more voices from across mainland EU in the months ahead.

Please post a comment below to add your own feedback on the chat.

Thanks to Dr Fillingham for chairing the chat, along with Dr Emma Pagnamenta and the International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders for arranging open access to the papers for our Tweetchat journal clubs.