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Orthopaedic Physical Therapy Secrets, ed 2

Placzek JD, Boyce DA, eds. St Louis, MO 63146, Mosby Elsevier, 2006, paperback, 679 pp, illus, ISBN: 978-1-56053-708-3, $39.95.

All of the books in the "Secrets" series are designed to provide up-to-date information on a specialty area using the guided questioning method. This method is certainly one that is used in most education programs, especially in clinical education settings. The key difference is that, in this text, the answers in each topic are provided by the person who posed the question, so the reader can verify the answers. This begs the question, why? The book purports to provide "your physical therapy questions answered by experts you trust" when, in fact, these are not necessarily the reader's questions. In addition, the question-and-answer format does not add in any way to the ease of reading.

I believe, however, that the text does offer a wealth of information. The book is divided into 12 units with 78 chapters. The units cover basic science, electrotherapy and modalities, special topics, and each major anatomic region treated in orthopedic physical therapy.

Chapters are brief and to the point on the topic covered. The authors assume that the reader has a basic knowledge of orthopedic content, so the content is for the person who wants to develop an expert's knowledge base. The material, however, is presented in a way that encourages the reader to comprehend and digest facts rather than integrate them into clinical and critical thinking. This presentation style may not produce expertise in clinical practice, but it probably will produce expertise in the recitation of knowledge. In only one chapter are questions integrated into a case-based format that might lend itself more toward clinical application and the development of critical thinking.

The text is written by 87 contributors, with each making a contribution to one of the chapters. Some content is repeated among chapters. For instance, the definition of positive and negative predictive value is presented in 3 separate chapters. This information could have been synthesized with cross-referencing.

The approach to the development and selection of questions is not always transparent. Given that this text is a reference for board examination preparation, the reader would assume that the questions were taken from the matrix for the examination or from Description of Specialty Practice: Orthopaedics. Instead, it sometimes appears that the author of a chapter read a single journal article and then wrote specific questions about that article's results and implications. In other cases, the chapter author developed a series of questions without any regard for the content of other related chapters. In addition, orthopedic physical therapy does have unanswered questions. I would have liked to see these questions asked and documented and the authors acknowledge that there are gaps in our knowledge.

Each chapter contains its own bibliography; however, there are no in-text citations so it is difficult for the reader to locate an original source.

This book has a number of editorial drawbacks; nevertheless, it does contain valuable information, is very well indexed, and will sit on my shelf as a quick reference to orthopedic facts–but not orthopedic "secrets."

Julia Chevan

J Chevan, PT, PhD, OCS, is Associate Professor of Physical Therapy at Springfield College, Springfield, Mass

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This Article Full Text (PDF) Submit a response Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when Rapid Responses are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Chevan, J. Search for Related Content PubMed Articles by Chevan, J. Related Collections Musculoskeletal System/Orthopedic: Other Social Bookmarking                      What's this?