Perspective

Clinical information is essential in modern health care practice, and doctors have access to a range of information sites. Clinical resources can give up-to-date information, aid decision-making, improve patient care, and simplify clinical reasoning. The manner in which doctors use clinical resources is thus critical because of the potential impact on clinical practice and patient outcomes.

Clinical reasoning necessitates a solid comprehension of the relevant clinical subject matter; textbooks and online resources provide access to material that can aid and facilitate clinical decision-making. Clinical information was mostly obtained from textbooks and conversations with other doctors, according to studies conducted in the 1990s on physiotherapists' use of clinical resources. Physiotherapists today use internet resources to enhance their professional education through enhanced access and communication, to support clinical practice, and to provide access to clinical information at the point of care, according to studies published in the last decade.

Although the most recent study on resource use in Australia, conducted in 2004, found that fewer hospital-based physiotherapists in New South Wales (53 percent) used a statewide online clinical resource portal for patient care, 77 percent of physiotherapists surveyed in 2013 used online resources for professional purposes one to four times per week. Given the 9-year gap between these two investigations, it's possible that the difference in physiotherapists' use of internet resources in these two contexts was influenced by substantial technological advancements during this time, especially innovations in healthcare-related information technology.

A thorough understanding of clinical anatomy is essential in the examination, diagnosis, and treatment of musculoskeletal problems in physiotherapy outpatient practice. Clinical anatomy resources are valuable because they give information that is relevant to patient care. Physiotherapists' use of clinical anatomy resources has remained unexplored despite the importance of clinical resources, the increase of online and mobile education and information, and the importance of clinical anatomy in diagnosis and clinical decision making. Our research looked into how musculoskeletal outpatient physiotherapists in hospitals interpret and interact with clinical anatomy resources.

Survey

We created the survey with the help of academic colleagues and tested it with a small group of physicians in a hospital physiotherapy department to ensure its accuracy (their responses are not included in the data reported here). The survey questions looked into physiotherapists' attitudes and behaviours regarding the use of clinical anatomy resources in the workplace, including resource type, frequency of use, and primary purpose of use, as well as perceived resource reliability, resource barriers, and ways to improve clinical anatomy resource facilities. In addition, the poll gathered basic demographic information (age, educational background).

The poll questions were multiple choice, with a section at the conclusion for free remark and a combination of "select all that apply" and "choose one only" formats. We used a postal survey rather than an online poll to guarantee that junior workers who did not have access to email or the Internet at work could participate in the study.

Sampling

Outpatient musculoskeletal physiotherapists from 75 randomly selected public hospitals and health facilities in 16 of New South Wales' 18 local health districts were invited to participate. Because the remaining two local health districts (Sydney Children's Hospitals Network and Justice and Forensic Mental Health Network) are specialized networks not relevant to this inquiry, this sample can be considered representative of the population of interest.

Analyzing data

We utilized the R programming language to analyses our data (R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria). To study connections between demographic factors, attitudes and behaviour regarding resource consumption, we employed models. For several descriptive statistics and logistic regression analyses, we utilized dichotomous and proportional odds ordinal logistic models, and we found statistically significant Odds Ratios (ORs; p 0.05). ORs were utilized to assess the relationship between categorical predictors and categorical outcomes, with CIs provided as a measure of each OR's precision. We used qualitative thematic analysis and grounded theory to examine open-ended responses.