Project Background

The Australian Therapy Outcome Measures (AusTOMs) project resulted from a visit to Australia by Professor Pam Enderby, currently Dean of Medicine at the University of Sheffield, UK. Professor Enderby, along with Professor Alison Perry, Professor Stephen Duckett, and others at La Trobe University wrote a project proposal for the AusTOMs project, which would involve creating an outcome measure relevant to the needs of Australian allied health professionals; particularly physiotherapists, speech pathologists, and occupational therapists. The research team at La Trobe included staff from the schools of Physiotherapy, Human Communication Sciences, Occupational Therapy and Public Health.

Professor Pam Enderby and her colleague, Dr Alex John, have both been involved in the development of the AusTOMs, and are associate investigators with the project team. Regular videoconferencing has been used to allow these UK-based investigators to have input into the AusTOMs project. Dr John travelled to Australia to help with the training phase of the study, and both Professor Enderby and Dr John presented at the Allied Health Outcomes Conference organised by the AusTOMs team in August, 2003.

The AusTOMs project was funded by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing, and aimed to develop a valid and reliable measure of therapy outcomes for physiotherapy, speech pathology, and occupational therapy. The two-year project included three main phases:

Phase 1: Scale development

Phase 2: Training, reliability testing

Phase 3: Data collection, assessment of tool validity