October 2024 is the 25th anniversary of PEDro helping clinicians improve their evidence-based practice. The 2022 #PEDroTacklesBarriers to evidence-based physiotherapy campaign offered tips and strategies to overcome the four biggest barriers to evidence-based physiotherapy: lack of time, language, lack of access and lack of statistical skills.

Lack of time
Lack of time is the most common barrier to evidence-based physiotherapy. Many factors contribute to this, including a high workload, competing priorities, efficiency in all five steps of evidence-based physiotherapy (Ask, Acquire, Appraise, Apply, Assess), lack of resources, lack of confidence, and being overwhelmed by the amount of evidence and the processing of changing practice. Physiotherapists from around the world shared their time barriers and the strategies they developed to overcome them.

Language
Physiotherapists from Brazil, Poland, India, Germany and the Netherlands discuss the important barrier to accessing and implementing evidence-based physiotherapy around the world, with English being the dominant language used to publish and disseminate evidence-based research and guidelines. They also share the strategies they developed to help tackle this barrier.

Lack of access
Evidence-based physiotherapy cannot be implemented if there are barriers to accessing research. As part of the campaign, we shared different ways to access research including how to access full-text using links on PEDro and elsewhere.

Lack of statistical skills
A lack of statistical skills is a common barrier to interpreting evidence and implementing evidence-based physiotherapy. We shared discussions from three clinician-researchers about methods used to conduct, analyse, report and interpret randomised controlled trials.

Putting it all together
The campaign concluded with examples of how evidence-based practice has been implemented in the real world to improve the outcomes of patients.