The ORION Project invites all osteopaths currently in clinical practice to participate in a 2024 relaunch of the ORION workforce survey to contribute to the growing evidence about osteopathy. This relaunch will ensure the ORION project output and insights remain relevant to contemporary osteopathy practice across Australia – continuing to track input from those osteopaths who may be well-established in practice while also tracking input from more recently qualified osteopaths and/or those more recently establishing their practice experience. The relaunch will enable ORION to continue to provide research evidence to help strengthen and grow the profession across Australia.
Regardless of whether you participated in the previous ORION survey back in 2016 or not – your participation in 2024 remains essential.
If you have previously signed up and participated in the ORION project back in 2016 – thank you. Your help and input has been essential and is much appreciated. However, we strongly encourage you to remain involved and please complete the 2024 ORION survey linked here to help up-date your responses and the wider ORION database.
If you have not participated previously and are new to the ORION project, we strongly encourage you to participate and sign up. Now is the time to have your voice heard, to help strengthen the research base for the profession and to help build the empirical body of knowledge about osteopathy and related health outcomes relevant for 2024 and beyond.
The ORION survey will take just over 10 minutes to complete. Please either scan the QR code above (to complete the survey on your smartphone) OR click on the link below to get started and to share your practice experiences, insights, and circumstances.
https://utsau.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8BKu3KEJBHn5kTs
By describing your practice and clinical characteristics, your unique experience will become part of the future of osteopathy research. Participants can also become part of the ORION network with no fee and no obligation simply by completing the section at the end of the workforce survey.
Since its inception in 2016, ORION has produced 25 peer-reviewed journal articles and 9 research sub-studies involving over 30 practitioners and researchers. To date, ORION research has provided important insights into the practices and contributions of osteopathy in Australian health care.
ORION is conducted and managed by researchers at the School of Public Health at UTS, co-led by Associate Professor Amie Steel and Distinguished Professor Jon Adams. Research ethics approval granted by UTS (ETH23-8622).
Why should I participate?
The ORION Project provides a unique opportunity for you to help bridge the gap between both practitioners and researchers AND research and practice. ORION is primarily focused on understanding osteopathy with and for osteopaths like you as well as those for whom you care. We believe examining the role of osteopathy in wider health and identifying related health outcomes from such care needs to adequately reflect what osteopaths do in practice. Your experience and perspectives are essential to this endeavour.
In order to ensure we can maximize the rigour and impact of the analyses and findings produced from ORION requires as many osteopaths to join the project as possible. We are looking to match if not increase our 2016 ORION recruitment success where nearly 1,000 osteopaths (over 49% of the entire profession) participated in the project.
Your participation in ORION means you:
- Help grow the research and evidence-base for your practice and wider profession in Australia
- Contribute your unique practice characteristics, circumstances and experiences to the largest national practice-based study of osteopathy worldwide
- Co-build a practice database that can be drawn upon by your profession to help promote osteopathy to external stakeholders including governments, those in the public health system and health policymakers
- Help to ensure the ORION database and analyses are robust and rigorous and thereby of maximum impact
- Can promote your personal role in building the research base for osteopathy to your patients, community and professional colleagues (we know from our previous PBRN experience that many practitioners report strong recognition amongst their patients regarding their PBRN research involvement)
ORION provides all osteopaths in practice in Australia an essential role in helping better address core significant questions such as:
- who are the osteopaths providing care across Australia?
- where are these osteopaths situated (urban, rural and remote settings or in some cases a mixture)?
- with whom do osteopaths practice (solo practice, joint practice, multi-disciplinary practice settings)?
- who are the patients/communities osteopaths treat and what conditions do these patients present with?
- with who else in the health care system do osteopaths refer, communicate or have a close working relationship?
- what are the positive health outcomes of receiving osteopathic care for those with a wide range of conditions and symptoms?
ORION Project Overview
The Osteopathy Research and Innovation Network (ORION) Project is the world’s first national practice-based research network (PBRN) focused exclusively on osteopathy. With generous financial support from Osteopathy Australia (OA), ORION is designed and independently conducted by health researchers at the School of Public Health, University of Technology Sydney.
ORION is designed to help grow the evidence-base and research capacity in Australian osteopathy over coming years. At its heart, ORION is an inclusive project which will help connect all researchers and practicing osteopaths across the breadth of the profession with a view to coordinating and advancing research activity for the good of osteopathy practice and patient outcomes.