Physio Connect: A Clinical Mentoring Tool for Physiotherapists
Physiotherapists in the early years of their career are often isolated with regards to managing challenging clinical cases, which has been directly linked to a short career lifespan within the profession. Therefore, creating a digital means of establishing connections between fellow colleagues and mentors is key in reducing this isolation and providing much-needed support.
As physiotherapists and UWA Master of Manual Therapy graduates, we have found that while mentoring and teaching recent graduates, there is a need to conduct further research and development to minimise clinician isolation and improve patient management.
The aim of developing the Physio Connect app is to provide a simple and well-designed mentoring collaborative learning environment for each user. We hope to create a database in which senior/willing physiotherapists register to provide clinical support to participants. The software should be formatted as a mobile app to increase accessibility within the clinic, on the go and at home.
Within the App, there should be the following components:
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Participant profile completion and screening for suitability (drop down menu format):
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Participant fills out a form within the app with their details, qualification and level of experience as well as the specific goals they wish to achieve by using Physio Connect.
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The admin team (us) will screen the requests and assess if these participants are suitable for the app due to the personalised nature of physio treatment.
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Once approved, the participant will ideally receive a notification within the app that they have been accepted and may proceed to submit their mentoring questions.
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Mentor profile completion and screening for suitability:
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Mentors are to similarly complete a profile with their experience, clinical qualification and areas of special interest. These areas of interest are tags that will be matched with appropriate participants.
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Alternative: A database of participants and mentors (which we have) can be pre-loaded into the app.
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Secure Case Study Proforma:
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Participant fills out this form within the app with their relevant clinical information/questions in a patient anonymous format. Participants can tag their case study with key phrases so they can be automatically matched with mentors with the same tags.
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E.g. If participant tags their goal as "low back pain management" it will automatically match them with mentors with low back pain specialty.
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Once allocated to appropriate mentors, the first one to accept the case study is assigned responsibility (much like Uber where drivers accept ride requests).
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Participant will receive notification that their request has been accepted and the mentor can then communicate directly with them in the app.
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Upon case study completion, the participant is invited to rate their experience (similar to an Uber rating) and provide any specific feedback.
These analytics need to demonstrate mentor-participant success rates and number of case studies completed, which will be used to assess the effectiveness of this program.
Client
Contact Person: Jonathan Warne, Luke McManus and Alissa Warne
Telephone: 0405652383
Email: [email protected]
Preferred method of contact: email or mobile
Location: Perth CBD
Client Unavailability
None
IP Exploitation Model
The client wishes for IP to be assigned to the client, though they also comment that,
"We can always revisit this and discuss further should the IP model need to change"