Evidence Based Practice

Team Leader: Dr Kryss McKenna

Team Members: Professor Jenny Strong, Ms Tammy Hoffmann, Mrs Sally Bennett, Dr Sylvia Rodger, and Assoc Prof Jenny Ziviani

Collaborators: Ms Annie McCluskey (University of Western Sydney).

The University of Queensland Evidence Based Occupational Therapy Group was formed in recognition of the growing interest and influence of evidence-based practice in occupational therapy and healthcare in general. This group has a number of papers that have been published and has presented at conferences focusing on the issues of research utilisation and evidence-based practice. The most active component of this group currently is the OTseeker team. Following a large national survey of occupational therapists to determine their attitudes towards evidence-based practice and their related educational and resource needs, and an international symposium in 2001, the OTseeker team was formed to develop and trial an occupational therapy evidence database.

• The development of OTseeker (Occupational Therapy – Systematic Evaluation of Evidence Database). OTseeker was launched on the Internet in March 2003 (http://www.otseeker.com/) and currently contains over 2000 thousand systematic reviews and critically appraised randomised controlled trials of relevance to occupational therapists. It is continually being expanded as more articles are added to the database.

Please see the Annual School Report for further details of the current research projects being conducted by this group.