Barriers to implementing evidence-based practice among occupational therapists' in paediatric setting / Puteri Nurfariza Arbain

The expanding of information has a major impact to our lives. Nowadays, when people trying to find solutions, the flow of information preferable comes from scientifically proven know ledge and information. In healthcare system, information comes from research findings in the evidence-based article. Occupational therapists are among the healthcare providers who ·had to follow these guidelines in giving treatment or intervention to their clients. However, to date there is no published study regarding the application and barriers in implementing evidence-based practice amongst occupational therapy in paediatric setting in Malaysia. Hence, the aim to identify barriers to implementing evidence-based practice in paediatric settings. The Barriers Scale is disseminate using an online application. The link to the questionnaire then being share through various social media available to the participant. 80 occupational therapists participated in the survey. The majority of the participant are female (n=61) and male respondent (n=l9). A Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal­ Wallis used to find out the significant different between demographic and barriers. There are no significant difference between participant demographic profile and the barriers. The result showed one significant different between age group·with question 2 in barriers to research utilization scale: Implications for practice are not made clear. In conclusion, gender differences, educational background and age differences are not contributing factors to the barrier implementing evidence-based practice. It may due to the knowledge and skills gather from course taken encompass into practice adequate for them to use into practice. Other than that, mentorship from the senior co-worker play role in culturing group discussion an d learning opportunities despite of age differences. It is recommended that in future research, participants need to recruit more so that the result can be generalize to occupational therapists population in Malaysia.