We hope MSK Medicine will be used by physicians in sports medicine, physical medicine and rehabilitation, rheumatology, orthopedics, family medicine and others, as well as allied health members including physiotherapists, chiropractors and massage therapists.
The knowledge base of modern medicine is ever-expanding which makes it virtually impossible for a health care professional to stay up to date. It’s been estimated that you would have to read 20+ articles a day to do so! Not practical for most.
The thing is a lot of the time the answers to your clinical questions are out there. There are hundreds of systematic reviews and meta-analyses being published in an attempt to summarize research data, however, studies show that most clinicians rarely use these as a guide to their clinical practice.
At mskmedicine.com we are starting something new. We want to bring the knowledge to you, in a concise and simple manner.
View ArticlesA. We come up with a clinically relevant MSK related question and conduct a search of recent published systematic reviews using multiple electronic databases including, but not limited to PUBMED/Medline, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Database.
B. Summarize the reviews and rate the methodology via the AMSTAR
C. Present the most important and most relevant data to you, the clinician, in a concise manner.
A. Use the “search bar” to ask your MSK related clinical question or browse our EBM articles, and select the one that’s most appropriate.
B. You are presented with data from a recently published systematic review presented in an easily read (“P.I.C.O.”) format so that you can quickly see if the patient population, intervention and outcomes are clinically relevant to you. As well we’ve assigned an AMSTAR to each article to inform you of the quality of the systematic review. Finally, we’ve attempted to summarize the most clinically relevant information, including existing guidelines, in a clean, simple way that will allow you at a quick glance to remember what you’ve already read.
C. Take your search deeper either by browsing other relevant mskmedicine.com EBM articles (Left panel) or take your search to “pubmed” by clicking on the meta-analysis.
It really is. It is all about getting the information into your hands, to help make evidence informed clinical decisions. Of course we don’t have the answers to all your MSK related questions. We’re starting with dozens of EMB articles and, with the help of an increasingly growing userbase, we’re collecting your clinical questions and expanding the library. However, even if we don’t have your answer now, you can still use the site as the starting point for your exploration deeper into the evidence.