Does online clinical mentoring for physical therapists enhance clinical practice and patient outcomes? A randomized controlled trial.

The sample size was smaller than planned (27 PTs instead of 30; 150 patients instead of 210), which may have reduced statistical power, although the authors argue the effect size was too small to be clinically relevant. The participating PTs already had high baseline patient outcomes, meaning their patients improved significantly even before the intervention, creating a ceiling effect that made it difficult to detect further improvements. The PTs were highly motivated volunteers who completed the study over an average of 35 weeks, which may not represent the general population of PTs. The mentoring program was brief (six hours), and the fidelity checks showed that some important mentoring behaviors were not consistently implemented. The study included patients with acute, subacute, and chronic pain, whereas previous successful mentoring studies focused on chronic conditions, which may require more complex reasoning and benefit more from mentoring.

Funding was received from Western Sydney University as part of a Research Training Program supporting PhD candidates. The funding was used to pay research assistants and provide gift vouchers to clinical mentors.

Do not conclude that online clinical mentoring is ineffective. This study tested a very brief program (six hours) in PTs who already had good patient outcomes. The lack of difference compared to lectures may be due to the short duration and the high baseline performance of the participants, not the mentoring model itself.