A survey of Chinese ophthalmologists' cognition and practice of evidence-based medicine

Abstract

Background Evidence-based medicine (EBM) has been widely applied to solve clinical issues internationally,however,the awareness of oculists in China still is dissatisfied,and the relevant issue survey can offer the training guidance.Objective This study was to survey the status of the cognition and practice of EBM in ophthalmologists in China and analyze the problems in their EBM practice.Methods Two hundred and thirty-three ophthalmologists were enrolled in the 18th Congress of Chinese Ophthalmological Society in August,2013.A survey about EBM was performed by self-made questionnaire,including general data from the surveyors,the way and channel of understanding EBM,the attitude toward EBM,clinical practice of EBM and influencing factors.The educational background,professional qualifications,ranked distribution of hospitals which surveyors came from,size of the citys and attribute of hospitals were stratified and analyzed.SPSS 17.0 software was used for statistical analysis.Results A total of 233 questionnaires were distributed,and 233 were regained with the response rate 100％,and 214 valid questionnaires were included,with the effective rate 91.8％.50.5％ of the respondents (104/206) knew EBM in university.The proportion of those believe EBM initially as medical students was 41.8％,and 49.1％ (102/208) were aware of EBM in recent 8 years.And 47.7％ (101/211) believed that EBM should be given priority in clinic,and 7.5％ (16/211) were indifferent to EBM.Only 3.8％ (8/211) surveyors thought EBM to be little important.The proportion of the respondents choosing ‘ know’ or ‘ moderately-know’ were 69.1％ (148/214),35.0％ (75/ 213),21.5％ (46/213) and 57.4％ (121/211) respectively in EBM,Meta analysis,Cochrane as well as Preferred Practice Patterns (PPPs) with a higher receiving degree in well-educated individuals (P =0.000,0.000,0.001,0.000).EBM was well practiced in 11.7％ (25/211) oculists,with a higher using frequency in senior ophthalmologists,and 17.8％ (89/495,frequency) oculists consulted the EBM literature to resolve problems in clinic,with a significant difference in the using frequency of EBM among the different educational background subjects (x2=13.406,P=0.037).The top three barriers which affected the application of EBM in clinical practices were lack of time and the limited energy,feeling it difficult to evaluate the evidence correctly as well as the absence of cases proving the efficacy to treat based EBM.The type of EBM evidence mostly used by respondents was medical database (36.7％),and CNKI (33.5％) and PubMed (38.4％) were the mostly used Chinese and English database,respectively.Respondents who have never searched the Chinese or English database occupied up to 7.3％ and 17.2％,respectively.Conclusions The cognition degree and applying frequency are still lower in ophthalmologists in China.The training of EBM should be strengthened in medical students.The guidance measurement should be taken to encourage eye doctors to apply EBM. Key words: Evidence-based medicine; Ophthalmologist; Cognition; Practice; Attitude; Cross-sectional study ; Questionnaire