EBOT – an evidence-based occupational therapy practice guideline database that encourages submission of new research.
Disclosure: EBOT is a project that I created.
With the discontinuation of guideline.gov, the healthcare community lost a very valuable free EBP resource.
Occupational therapists know they should follow and provide evidence-based practice for their clients. However, there may be many pragmatic barriers to EBP for OT practitioners – lack of time, knowledge of how to conduct research, or costs associated with accessing journal articles.
It certainly does take some time to search the literature, read some journal articles, and come to a conclusion. Many OTs may not have this time due to high productivity demands such as in acute care or at a skilled nursing facility. Many OTs who graduated many years ago may not have learned how to conduct research or they may be very rusty at it. Research methods terminology can be difficult to grasp and remember and sometimes there may be conflicting evidence.
I decided to take action to advocate for the profession by using my skills to create a new resource that can bring value to OTs, students, educators, and showcase the hard work in research that is being done. For occupational therapy to advance and continue to be a profession that is understood and accepted by the public, I believe there needs to be not only ongoing research but acceptance and practical application of such research.
Unfortunately, the old model of journal articles seems to be outdated and on its way out. Peer reviewing is important, but it takes much too long for a manuscript to be reviewed, accepted and published. Then there’s the other side of access – many of these articles are inaccessible to graduates who do not have a library that subscribes to multiple databases.
I think some of the new projects such as by Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong that is hoping to disrupt the old research publication model will be very interesting as it leverages the power of the Internet and instant communication with cryptocurrency to motivate research and knowledge-based on a new system instead of purely by citations.
Scientific research should be like open-sourced software. – Brian armstrong, coinbase ceo
EBOT, which stands for Evidence-Based Occupational Therapy, is a similar resource to AHRQ’s Guideline.gov and is an OT practice guideline database based on the traffic light system for recommending interventions (red, yellow, green). Level I evidence journal articles are used to make recommendations such as systematic reviews and randomized controlled trials.
EBOT is meant for OTs to quickly reference a condition and interventions based on a population. Everything is searchable, sortable, and filterable in the database and absolutely free to access.
It is ‘responsive’ and works on tablets and mobile, although it works better on desktop due to a large amount of data on the screen overall.
You can help out the OT community and support EBOT by contributing EBP summaries and guidelines using the submission form.
So see you all on EBOT!