A Pilot Study to Examine the Effect of an Educational Poster on the Knowledge and Practices of Lateral Elbow Radiograph Repositioning in Radiographers

AIM: This pilot study aimed to evaluate the knowledge and practices of South Australian radiographers regarding lateral elbow repositioning and to determine whether an educational poster could improve repositioning knowledge.

METHOD: The study was undertaken in four stages. Stage one involved the development of a survey to explore radiographer knowledge and practices surrounding lateral elbow repositioning. Stage two involved the development of an educational poster. Stage three was a pilot validity study. Three participants (n = 3) were involved in testing the validity and test-retest reliability of the survey and the poster. Stage four was the interventional study which involved the distribution of surveys to two radiography departments in South Australia on two occasions, before and after the distribution of the poster. Six complete data sets were analysed.

RESULTS: The pilot validity study ensured the test-retest reliability of the survey was strong (P = .629). It was determined that an educational poster made no significant difference to the knowledge of lateral elbow radiograph repositioning among radiographers (P = .253). It was indicated that this result was not due to familiarity with the presurvey questions (P = .171). Thematic analysis of the open discussion questions found that most participants found the poster helpful but did not consider repositioning to be difficult. The introduction of the poster did not increase image repeat rate and the poster was used moderately over the study length.

CONCLUSION: As this study was unable to determine whether a poster could improve the knowledge and practices of lateral elbow repositioning among radiographers, further research is needed.