Wendy Walker has been a valuable contributor to Physiopedia since she completed the Professional Ethics Course in Physiopedia last year. She is a yellow belt volunteer, the neurology category editor and more recently has become the topic expert for the Facial Palsy and Facial Nerve pages. We asked Wendy to give us her thoughts on being a topic expert in Physiopedia, this is what she had to say:
I haven’t been doing this for very long, and already I’ve become aware of several benefits of being a Topic Expert.
- I now have a convenient place to collect together information, accessible from any computer
- I can direct others to it, eg. colleagues, students, course participants, even patients
- I am able to expand/update/add to pages, and folk can then access it
- Surprisingly, I find that it aids with organising my thoughts on the topic as a whole; the layout and the interaction of different pages within the website is somehow quite different to the organisation (or maybe lack of it) in my brain.
- I suspect that as time goes on it will even add to my authority as an expert on the topic.
There are particular benefits in regard to teaching:
- It allows for forgetfulness on the part of the tutor – if I omit to mention something when teaching a course giving a lecture, I can be assured that at least the information is present on the topic page on the Physiopedia.
- I can tailor updates to the pages to answer questions raised by course participants.
- If you wish, you could run a paperless course: I’ve not been brave enough to do this yet too worried about what the feedback forms might say! but the next generation of young physios may well be up for it…
So if you are even slightly attracted by the idea of becoming a Topic Expert, I urge you to give it a go. As an expert in your field,you already have a wealth of knowledge both in your brain, and also no doubt in many files on your computer, so it won’t take you too long to arrange some of it onto a few pages in Physiopedia. And then you can reap the rewards of your efforts…
This is a great insight from Wendy which highlights some benefits that we never would have thought of. Anyone can apply to become a topic expert in Physiopedia, just choose your page and get in touch!