Table 4. Results in the third round among the 131 participants.
| Possible solutions of promoting EBP in the rehabilitation profession in Japan | Percent agreement (agree or strongly agree ratings) | Average | Median | Coefficient of variation |
| Improving communication skills with medical staffs, patients, and academic PTs/OTs/STs† | 92.4 | 4.0 | 4.0 | 10.9 |
| Promoting awareness among therapists of the concept of EBP and the objective usefulness of practice guidelines as a tool to implement EBP† | 84.7 | 3.9 | 4.0 | 13.6 |
| Making information on EBP and practice guidelines more publicly available to therapists and patients† | 84.0 | 3.9 | 4.0 | 13.1 |
| Offering continuous support† | 83.2 | 3.9 | 4.0 | 13.1 |
| Gradually applying new practices in therapists to ensure accuracy, completeness, and continuance† | 83.2 | 3.9 | 4.0 | 13.7 |
| Setting up training sessions and workshops that do not specify a place or time† | 81.7 | 3.9 | 4.0 | 15.7 |
| Observing how people are actively implementing EBP (e.g. medical doctors)† | 77.1 | 3.8 | 4.0 | 17.0 |
| Making students of healthcare professionals strongly aware of the need for EBP from training school stage† | 77.1 | 3.8 | 4.0 | 15.9 |
| Holding awareness sessions to motivate staff and increase their willingness to provide the best care to patients† | 74.0 | 3.7 | 4.0 | 17.4 |
| Establishing an association or other subsidy scheme to create opportunities to learn about EBP at the workplace† | 70.2 | 3.7 | 4.0 | 16.3 |
| Developing apps that are useful for EBP implementation | 69.5 | 3.7 | 4.0 | 16.0 |
| Arranging workshops, local or abroad, for those staff who are willing to gain EBP knowledge and skills | 67.2 | 3.7 | 4.0 | 17.4 |
| Time management (e.g., assigning less work to two therapists so that they can perform EBP tasks) | 65.6 | 3.6 | 4.0 | 19.8 |
| Strengthening efforts by associations and other organizations to promote research activities that demonstrate the benefits of healthcare services to promote EBP | 64.9 | 3.6 | 4.0 | 16.3 |
| Enabling patients to understand the quality of healthcare services with respect to the level of EBP implementation | 64.9 | 3.7 | 4.0 | 15.9 |
| Involving patients in the treatment process | 64.1 | 3.7 | 4.0 | 18.2 |
| Representing information on EBP by well-known persons through accessible media (e.g. YouTube) in a format that everyone can understand | 62.6 | 3.6 | 4.0 | 19.1 |
| Creating a system to quantify the degree of EBP implementation and to increase healthcare fees from the government according to the degree of compliance | 61.8 | 3.6 | 4.0 | 19.1 |
| Organizing awareness sessions for staff to highlight the positive outcomes of EBP | 60.3 | 3.6 | 4.0 | 17.9 |
| Creating specific workplace rules to reduce clinical workloads in order to afford EBP implementation | 59.5 | 3.5 | 4.0 | 22.2 |
| Creating a system that allows us to get continuing education points not only when we attend EBP workshops, but also when we subsequently hold transmitter workshops at our workplaces | 56.5 | 3.5 | 4.0 | 19.5 |
| Developing awareness guidelines about EBP for patients and disseminate them through bulletin boards, brochures, and roll-up banners | 53.4 | 3.6 | 4.0 | 17.5 |
| Creating a system to quantify the extent to the EBP implementation, so that as adherence increases, each employee is evaluated in the workplace accordingly | 45.0 | 3.4 | 3.0 | 19.5 |
| Offering incentives at early stages | 43.5 | 3.4 | 3.0 | 21.8 |
| Creating public awareness that implementing EBP is essential by widely highlighting EBP usefulness in mass media such as TV, newspapers, and magazines | 34.4 | 3.3 | 3.0 | 22.5 |
| Running awareness campaigns to improve collaboration among medical staff and with patients to increase patient confidence | 31.3 | 3.3 | 3.0 | 19.0 |
| Creating a qualification to teach the EBP implementation | 27.5 | 3.3 | 3.0 | 18.1 |
| A formal decision from the upper management to authorize and include EBP in PT/OT/ST | 23.7 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 26.5 |
| Reducing the amount of time for clinical work to afford the implementation of EBP | 22.9 | 2.9 | 3.0 | 31.4 |
†Solutions reached the pre-determined criteria for consensus.
EBP: Evidence-based practice; PT: physical therapist; OT: occupational therapist; ST: speech therapist.