Articles: professional-practice.
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In physiotherapy, as with many other health-care practices, therapeutic interventions, based on scientific knowledge, may be at odds with patient experiences. Patients may understand what they need to do to improve their health condition, but feel that these requirements may be emotionally, socially, or culturally incompatible with their lifestyles, social behavior, or personal choices. To work in the best interest of their patients, physiotherapists need to engage with the tensions that exist between scientific reason and social reality to offer a meaningful and relevant service for their patients. ⋯ In this paper, I examine what constitutes physiotherapists' practice knowledge and how Habermas's theory of knowledge, interest, and communication strengthens shared decision-making and can be used as a vehicle toward emancipatory practice. Drawing on data generated in an action research project, I examine how Habermas's ideas can be applied in emancipatory physiotherapy practice. The paper concludes that emancipatory practice is meaningful because it creates opportunities for reflection, evaluation, and choice for future physiotherapy practice.
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Improving patient outcomes in community-based settings is the goal of both the Clinical Translational Science Award program and practice-based quality improvement (QI) programs. Given this common goal, integrating QI and outcomes research is a promising strategy for developing, implementing, and evaluating clinical interventions. This article describes the challenges and strengths illuminated by the conduct of a combined research/QI study in a nascent practice-based research network. ⋯ A major strength is the increased likelihood of both engaging clinical practices in research and developing successful clinical interventions. Required elements for success include identification of enthusiastic clinical research "champions," involvement of researchers with clinical experience, and adequate funding to support both research and clinical resources and dissemination. Combined Ql/research projects in the practice-based research environment have the potential to improve and shorten the cycle from good idea to improved clinical outcomes in real-world settings.