Development and use of standardised data collection tools to support and inform musculoskeletal practice

Clinicians all over the world are increasingly being faced with the need to demonstrate and account for the way in which clinical services are delivered and the quality of the delivery. It is also imperative to develop a comprehensive profile of who is accessing these services, who benefits from these services; how much these services cost in terms of clinicians time, the use of other healthcare resources and the effectiveness of interventions utilised in relation to quality outcomes. Clinicians are themselves keen to have mechanisms to identify what approaches are being utilised in their own practice setting, how they work best and how they can be improved from a professional development perspective. They are also anxious to improve their skills based on informed reflective practice and identify gaps in their knowledge and skills. This masterclass identifies how standardised data collection (SDC) tools can be utilised in practice to gather the information required in a robust, agreed and accessible way. It summarises a method of SDC tool development and gives some examples of how SDC has been implemented in physiotherapy National Health Services and in physiotherapy private practice in the United Kingdom. The global relevance is that increasingly all physiotherapy services are being held and will be accountable for the quality and equity of care. In addition clinicians can find it useful to have benchmarks with which to compare their own and their departmental performance in terms of clinical activities and outcomes.