Abstract
BackgroundEvidence-based medicine (EBM) is the use of the current best evidence for patient care. Medical students should critically appraise the research evidence to help them during their clinical practice in the future. We conducted this study to assess the skills, terms and attitude toward EBM.MethodWe conducted a cross-sectional study for medical students from governmental universities. Students completed an online validated questionnaire consisting of several sections to assess skills, attitude and knowledge about terms related to EBM. We used a scale ranging from 1(strongly disagree) to 5(strongly agree) for the 11 questions assessing the attitude and a scale ranging from 1(Poor) to 5(advanced) for EBM skills.ResultsA total of 761 medical students with a mean age of 21.97 ± 1.64 participated in the study. 327 (43 %) of them were males. The most commonly used search engines were Google 690 (91 %) and Wikipedia 465 (61 %). Medical books 719 (94 %) and lecture notes 353 (46 %) were the most common sources for health information. The majority of students rated their skills related to EBM as average and below average for all questions (overall = 2.18 ± 0.8). Students rated their skills as poor (31 %) in locating professional literature, as average (34 %) in searching online databases, poor (42 %) in critical appraisal of a scientific publication reporting findings from clinical research and poor (36 %) in Critical appraisal of available scientific literature. Regarding attitude, the overall mean score was 2.83 ± 0.76. There is no significant difference in attitude score between students with or without EBM training (P = 0.2).The terms with the highest understanding were case-control study (45 %) and case report (44 %) for study design. Median (44 %) and sample size (43 %) for statistics. Incidence (46 %) and prevalence (44 %) for epidemiology.ConclusionsMedical students have a knowledge gap in skills and terms related to EBM and an average attitude towards EBM. The majority of them were using a nonscientific search engine to obtain medical information. There is a need to educate students about the proper steps for getting the scientific literature and EBM skills.
Highlights
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is the use of the current best evidence for patient care
A total of 761 medical students with a mean age of 21.97 ± 1.64 participated in the study. 327 (43 %) of them were males
There is no significant difference in attitude score between students with or without evidence-based medicine (EBM) training (P = 0.2)
Summary
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is the use of the current best evidence for patient care. Researchers defined evidence-based medicine (EBM) as “conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients” [1]. EBM practice can be applied in five steps: step one; converting the current clinical scenario into an answerable question using PICOS mnemonic, step two; identifying the best available research evidence by performing a proper literature review across various databases, step three; critical appraisal of the evidence for its validity, impact, and applicability, step four; applying the results of the appraisal with the clinical experience and patient’s values, and step five; evaluating the process and finding ways to improve it in the time [3]. EBM is of utmost importance in developing countries for its cost-effectiveness and efficient use of healthcare resources [6, 7]
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